Mobile Application Security Testing (MAST)

Identify, analyse and mitigate mobile application vulnerabilities

Application security is all about identifying and fixing vulnerabilities to ensure that the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data are maintained through controls and approaches applied at various points in the software life cycle (SDLC).
Although security involves multiple levels of control, both hardware and software, security testing activities are critical to assessing the actual effectiveness of the developments and integrations that have been implemented.
Protecting applications is essential in an ever-changing threat environment.

How MASVS helps protect your apps

Reduce risk and downtime

Security issues can bring business to a halt and cause costly downtime. Protecting applications and eliminating vulnerabilities helps prevent attacks. Proactive measures such as code reviews, security testing, and patch management ensure a more resilient digital infrastructure.

Supporting the corporate image

By prioritising application security, businesses can protect their customers’ data, maintain their trust and strengthen their reputation in the industry. Conversely, a security breach can quickly undermine that trust, resulting in financial and reputational losses that can be difficult to recover.

Preventing cyber attacks

Applications are often the target of cyber-attacks: malware and spyware exploit shared system and IPC logic to attack the app and reach the user or the backend. Implementing appropriate security measures is critical for organisations to prevent or mitigate the impact of these attacks.

Data protection

Reliable security measures help organisations protect the confidentiality and integrity of data, whether personal or sensitive, such as customer information and financial records, or logical and intellectual property, by defending it against unauthorised access, modification and theft.

Increased cost savings

Investing in the security of applications during design and development can deliver long-term savings by avoiding higher costs after launch. Robust security measures applied upstream also reduce maintenance costs due to bugs and vulnerabilities that have reached production.

Regulatory compliance

Application security measures are critical to ensuring that companies comply with data protection regulations such as GDPR and HIPAA, as well as standards such as PCI DSS. By monitoring the proper adoption of these practices, organisations can avoid fines and legal issues resulting from non-compliance.

The mobile app security process

Secure design and development - Security is built into the application architecture and development practices to minimise vulnerability. This involves validation, authentication, error handling and secure deployment pipelines.

Code review and verification - Code is tested and verified for known vulnerabilities, deprecated classes and methods, out-of-date libraries and sub-optimal settings.

Security testing - verifying built-in controls and ensuring compliance with standards, it looks for vulnerabilities and logical fallacies that could lead to a cyberattack, as well as any weaknesses that could become dangerous.

Secure deployment and continuous monitoring - Once deployed, the application is continuously monitored to detect incidents and respond quickly. Regular updates and patches are applied to protect against new threats.

Mobile application security tools and tests.

Developers perform application security testing (AST) to identify vulnerabilities in new or updated versions of software. Key tests include

SAST: A test that analyses the source code without running the application, identifying vulnerabilities in the early stages of development.
DAST: Unlike SAST, it is performed on running applications, simulating real-world attacks to identify vulnerabilities in production environments.
IAST: A combination of SAST and DAST that tests the application in real time during user interaction.
RASP: Solutions that monitor and protect running applications, detecting and responding to attacks in real time.
SCA: Tools that analyse open source dependencies and third-party libraries to identify vulnerabilities and licensing issues.
SDL: Tools that integrate security into the development cycle, providing policy and automated controls.

Together, these tools help protect applications against evolving threats.