Delivery velocity is one of the most important considerations for product owners while navigating a project. Delivering the best possible outcomes while ensuring minimal time-to-market is often considered the key metric that defines a project’s success.

However, should velocity come at the expense of mobile app security? Let’s discuss the potential tradeoffs. 

In this blog, the developers and security experts from a reputable custom mobile application development company will explore the growing security threats in the mobile app market, the rising demand for faster development cycles, and actionable strategies to secure mobile apps without sacrificing speed to market.

The Growing Threat Landscape for Mobile Apps

Cybercriminals have shifted their focus heavily toward mobile apps for a simple reason – that’s where the users are. They utilize a variety of attack vectors to infiltrate apps and access sensitive user data, including:

Injection Attacks

Injection attacks allow hackers to inject malicious code into an app to extract data, transmit malware, or gain control of users’ devices. For example, SQL injection is one of the most common attacks.

Phishing Scams

Criminals can embed phishing scams directly into apps to trick users into sharing sensitive information like login credentials. Users expect mobile apps to be secure and don’t suspect phishing risks.

Unauthorized Access

If proper access controls aren’t implemented within apps, unauthorized parties can gain access to backend systems and databases containing sensitive user data.

Data Leakage

Apps can accidentally leak user data through improper handling and transmission of information from the device to backend systems. Attackers exploit these leaks to steal data.

Poor Encryption

When data is not properly encrypted both at rest and in transit, it is vulnerable to interception by cybercriminals. Financial information and personal data require encryption.

This small sampling of threats shows the diversity of attacks targeting mobile apps today.

The Need for Speed in Mobile App Development

While security risks grow, so does the demand for ever-faster mobile app development and release cycles. Consider that:

The costs of slow development speeds are incredibly high. At the same time, businesses across every industry face mounting pressure to expand their mobile capabilities:

Fierce Competition

In every market segment, the most innovative mobile apps capture market share the fastest. Slow movers get left behind.

Changing Consumer Expectations

Today’s users expect slick mobile experiences and rapid iteration. Brands that move slowly see sharp declines in engagement.

Limitations of Legacy Systems

Many legacy backends were never built to support advanced mobile use cases. Rapid mobile app development is key to modernizing.

Startup Pressures

Startups often have one chance to impress investors and users with their MVPs. Any delays can lead to failure.

With so much on the line, it’s no surprise that mobile app development teams feel pressure to deprioritize security to speed up the time to market. But this leads down a dangerous path.

Fortunately, with the right strategies, it doesn’t have to be a tradeoff between velocity and security.

Best Practices for Secure and Rapid Mobile App Development

The key to fast yet secure mobile app dev lies in taking an API-first approach. APIs act as the integration layer between front ends like mobile apps and backend services like databases. By securing APIs, mobile developers can protect the flow of data to apps without compromising features or speed.

Here are five strategies to bake security into your API-first mobile development efforts without slowing things down.

1. Shift Security Testing Left

The days of waiting until the end of development to test security are over. Modern teams engage security from the very first lines of code and continue testing throughout the pipeline. This is referred to as “shifting left.”

Implementing unit tests, integration tests, static analysis, and code reviews that contain security criteria early in development allows teams to detect and remediate vulnerabilities for each code commit. This prevents critical issues from piling up down the line.

By frontloading security in development, teams avoid the major delays that come with waiting until launch to test and having to rewrite huge sections of code.

2. Adopt a CAMS Approach

CAMS provides a blueprint to bake security into the entire API/app lifecycle. It stands for:

• Continuous security testing – Run automated tests as changes are deployed.
• Assets management – Maintains real-time inventory of APIs/apps/infrastructure.
• Monitoring – Detect threats and abnormal behavior in production.
• Standards – Establishes and enforces API & coding policies.

Taking a comprehensive approach across the entire pipeline is crucial for establishing guardrails without compromising delivery speed.

3. Implement Runtime Application Self-Protection (RASP)

RASP adds a layer of protection against threats by embedding security controls directly into application and API runtime environments. Without RASP, apps and APIs have no defenses once deployed.

Here’s how it works:

• Sensors within runtime environments analyze traffic and activity
• Machine learning compares events to baseline behavior
• Deviations from normal trigger security responses in real time

By integrating RASP, teams shift security responsibilities away from app code and into the underlying platform. This simplifies development while providing powerful in-production protections.

4. Utilize DevSecOps Automation Tools

A cornerstone technique for accelerating secure development is DevSecOps automation. Rather than conduct security reviews and tests manually, DevSecOps tools weave them directly into CI/CD pipelines.

For example, static application security testing (SAST) and dynamic application security testing (DAST) tools can run automatically as part of the build and deployment stages. 

These include:

• Static code analyzers that inspect app code for vulnerabilities
• Network sniffers that replay attacks against running apps
• Orchestrators that coordinate tests across the pipeline

DevSecOps automation empowers teams to deliver bug-free, secure code much faster.

5. Secure APIs with a Web Application Firewall (WAF)

A WAF provides threat protection specifically for web apps and APIs. It evaluates HTTP requests between app front ends and API backends, then blocks suspicious patterns like SQL injections.

Implementing a robust WAF for APIs eliminates entire classes of security risks without requiring any changes to mobile app code. Modern WAF solutions easily integrate with CI/CD tooling for turnkey deployment, keeping release cycles rapid.

Over to You

With cyber attacks targeting mobile users growing exponentially, the need to balance velocity and security has never been more acute. Fortunately, with the right custom mobile app development company, you can reduce security risks without hitting the brakes on innovation.