With the Internet's widespread growth, South Africa has become quite dependent on it for economic affairs. This sharing of self-generated data is a boon to all business transactions and even social interactions. The increased dependence on the digital world raises significant concerns about cyber security. Cybercrime is a global problem that has affected South Africa, both in the private sector and in government.

With the rise of internet penetration and increased mobile usage, the significance of mobile applications has increased multifold. Everything is covered through mobile applications, from mundane day-to-day activities to high-end financial transactions. According to Techjury, there are 10 billion mobile devices currently in use, and a staggering more than 51% of people in the USA spend their time on mobile phones.

Full-fledged security is what every one needs! Due to the significant rise in cyber and malware attacks on the different apps, mobile app security is considered a critical component of app development. Therefore, having a highly secured mobile app ensures a hassle-free business operation! Whether your device is for professional or personal use, you need to protect a heap of data that you've stored.

Internet and software giant Google recently recalibrated how it categorizes its Playstore apps. Google's Android applications are tagged with 'nutrition labels' based on the security practices and the data they collect from users to share with third parties. The recently announced Google Play's Data Safety section goes into action from July 20th.

Threat actors utilize numerous anti-analysis techniques, one of the most common of which is Anti-Debugging, to make post-detection analysis more difficult. In the malware they create and the ways they use to avoid detection and analysis by cybersecurity experts and solutions, threat actors have shown to be more inventive.

Phone manufacturers and mobile network operators often implement stringent software restrictions for security reasons. However, these constraints can be circumvented by rooting your Android phone. Rooting is the process of gaining access to more administrative-level controls on an Android device. Despite its benefits, attackers often use rooting to target sensitive user and business data. According to security experts, 36 out of 1000 Android devices are rooted globally.

During the assessment of one of the financial applications built upon the flutter framework, we came across that the application was using PGP encryption for encrypting the API requests. It is pretty common for financial applications to be implementing traffic encryption, with AES seen to be the preferred algorithm for encrypting traffic. There is plenty of research already available on decrypting AES encrypted traffic.

As more and more businesses move towards cloud-based operations and embrace digital transformation, security is increasingly becoming an important question. As an enterprise migrates to the cloud, its assets and data resources need to be migrated as well, and that might expose the sensitive information.

For businesses who are looking to enhance profits and boost their global footprint, mobile app development and app security have become a top priority. With the smartphone industry still flourishing, it's evident that this trend won't be going away anytime soon, especially as market competition is increasing and new interactive technology becomes more prevalent. Mobile apps are expected to earn over $935 billion in revenue by 2023, according to Statista.

Handling sensitive data, compliance, and security is always front of mind for payment gateways. Technology is nowadays a double-edged sword. Just as digital advancement has revolutionized global commerce, so too have the tactics that cybercriminals use to defraud merchants and customers. A study by PWC, Global Economic Crime and Fraud Survey 2020, found that 47% of respondent companies experienced some form of fraud, resulting in US$42B of losses.