Top 5 Secureness Procedures, You Need to Know to Ensure the Security of Your Game App

It’s a mobile “Wild West” out there. The use of mobile devices continues to climb. There are already more Internet-connected mobile devices than humans in the world and mobile apps in the US alone account for 86% of the internet usage. The use of dedicated mobile apps is also increasing specially for gaming hence the gaming industry is constantly evolving and growing on a rapid scale by each passing day. While all this sounds great, game developers who want to remain in this market have to understand that their share of this pie is also at risk. As developers splurging millions of dollars in their time to market strategies as a result, the security of gaming apps takes a backseat in a haste to launch their product before their respective competitors.

Many iGaming apps in particular, are seeing an increasing number of breaches and hacking attacks. Most developers haven’t started to understand the impact this can have in the long term on brand reputation, on revenue and more. What they don’t realize is that a penny spent today will save their millions tomorrow and speaking of iGaming if you want to experience the best lot of games in a secure environment than join online casino with virgin for all your iGaming need.

Need for a Secure Gaming App
Mobile games are largely considered unsecure because they need continuous internet connectivity. This is fierce by the fact that many users try installing apps from unknown and unreliable sources thereby inviting malware and hampering the security of other apps on the phone as well. This trend therefore points to a future where mobile security is of utmost importance.

Security Measure #1: Secure the code
Often developers do not realize that mobile malware causes vulnerabilities and bugs in the development and design stage of the application.

• Scan the source code for vulnerabilities
• Always protect the application with encryption
• Application code should be easy to update and rebuild
• Be aware of running time, memory, data, app file size, and battery when securing the app.
• Having better security but losing performance of app or users is not what you want.
• Do not rely on app store approval

Developers should detect and eliminate security vulnerabilities in the code and immune their applications against reverse engineering such that no duplicate and malicious applications could be launched in the market.

Security Measure #2: Prevent Piracy
There are dozens of third party app stores around the world especially for Android apps. In many cases, app developers work with these third party app stores to host their apps and receive revenue. Some of these app stores end up hosting pirated versions of apps that people download. Not only does this deny any revenue to the actual app developers, most of these apps also contain malware, thus bringing bad name as well.

Sometimes, depend on the application architecture, we rely on the security of the underlying device. Developers need to devise methods to check the security of the device. In case of android there are dozens of third party app stores. In most cases, app developers work with these third party app stores to host their apps and receive revenue. Some of these app stores end up hosting pirated versions of apps that people download. In order to deal with this secure channels and services should be devised to track the associated risks attached with each of the application as and when they are added to the store.

Security measure #3: Secure the gateways
A small flaw in the in-app purchase system can sink your millions down the drain. For e.g. In July 2012, there was a flaw in the Apple in-app purchase system which allowed hackers to purchase in- game currency and other items for free. This resulted in 8.4 million false purchases, and cost apple between $8.3 million and $840 million in revenue. Look out for these critical points and use intrusion detection, installed on the perimeter in front of application backend, and obfuscation techniques to make it harder for the hackers to control the system.

Security measure #4: Test

• Never get tired of testing.
• Penetration testing helps to solve the weakness of system
• Test the data security problems and session managements
• Emulators will explain the performance of an app in any device or OS under a stimulated
  environment

Security measure #5: Specialist review
There is a reason why there are specialists. Even though you might have an internal team, getting an external audit done from a specialist will only help make your situation better.

Photo by bruce mars on Pexels.com