Web and mobile apps are now a dime a dozen as more ventures join the rush to roll out the next killer app. According to AppBrain, there are nearly 2.8 million apps on the Android market to date. Search for a particular interest or functionality and there is likely a dozen or so web and mobile apps that would pop up. The volume and pace of app creation lead to a sizable percentage of poorly developed apps that almost a quarter of users abandon them after first use.
What is worse, these bad apps can leave users exposed. A study by Codified Security found that 40 percent of published apps leave vulnerable backdoors that can be exploited by attackers. These vulnerabilities can leave user data exposed or allow malicious actors to gain access to computers and servers used in testing and development.
Related: How Do Google, Apple and Others Stack Up When It Comes to Protecting Your Privacy?
The competitive nature of the industry demands ventures to ship software quickly. However, shoddy coding and careless testing can leave the venture and its users exposed to cyberattack risks with potentially disastrous ends. The issue becomes even more pressing as new technology trends such as the wider adoption of financial technology and internet of things (IoT) devices is set to bring forth a new wave of apps and services.
Security must be at the center of all tech startup activities.
1. Threats are rampant.
2016 had no shortage of high profile cyberattacks that involved large tech companies, internet infrastructure providers, banks and government institutions. But, for every big name company, there were numerous other smaller organizations that also suffered attacks. Among the top threats that persist today are ransomware, distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) and data breaches.
Ransomware are consistently identified by security firms such as Kaspersky as top threats to organizations. Ransomware are malware that encrypt a computer or network’s files. Attackers then demand ransom from victims in exchange for a chance of getting their files back.
DDoS attacks seek to deny access to a website or service by overwhelming its server with traffic. The biggest DDoS attack on record happened last year when DNS provider Dyn was hit. The outage also affected popular sites and apps that were under Dyn’s network such as Netflix, Spotify and The New York Times.
Among these attacks, data breaches pose the real threat to end users. Stolen…