Maximizing Trust & Compliance in FinServ Mobile App Security

Financial services companies are increasingly relying on mobile applications to provide convenient and accessible services to their customers. With proper security measures in place, it can be easier for customers to entrust these apps with their sensitive personal and financial information. This is why mobile app security is crucial to the success of mobile financial services. Companies that prioritize the adoption of comprehensive security solutions throughout the application lifecycle, from testing to protecting and monitoring apps in the market, have an edge on winning customer loyalty.

The urgency for improved security in the financial services mobile app industry

According to a recent Financial App Security Report, less than 50% of financial apps are using proper mobile application security. This presents a significant risk to both financial services customers and companies. Specifically, this leaves them open to several threats including, reverse engineering, IP theft, fraudulent app clones, sensitive data loss, and many other negative outcomes. Companies must take proactive steps to secure mobile apps and protect their customers' data.

The cost of losing user trust in mobile financial services

Mobile financial services rely heavily on user trust. If users do not trust that their financial information is secure, they will not use these services. Unfortunately, the widespread lack of proper mobile app security measures is a significant obstacle to user trust. According to research from Statista, about 45% of Android and iOS users would stop using an app and would not recommend it to friends if the app suffers a security incident.

Comply or fall behind: Regulations in mobile financial services

Meeting compliance requirements is critical to ensuring the security and protection of sensitive financial data in mobile financial services apps. By adhering to regulations like PSD2, following security standards such as PCI DSS, and adopting technical requirements, financial services companies can upgrade their security and privacy practices, minimize their overall risk profile, and gain confidence in their customers. Failure to meet these compliance mandates can result in significant financial penalties, damage to brand reputation, and loss of customer trust. Ensuring that mobile financial services apps meet these compliance requirements is essential for building a secure and trustworthy platform for customers.

How Guardsquare helps mobile financial services improve their security posture

Multiple layers of protection

Guardsquare's solutions provide multiple layers of protection, including code hardening, and runtime application self-protection (RASP). Furthermore, Guardsquare’s mobile application protection automatically changes security measures for each new release to make it more difficult for malicious actors to exploit vulnerabilities. This approach resets the clock on attackers, forcing them to start from scratch with each new release. All these measures make it increasingly difficult for threat actors to access customers' private and financial data by reverse-engineering and tampering with financial services mobile apps.

Meeting compliance mandates

Guardsquare solutions are designed to help companies meet regulatory requirements such as PSD2, PCI (SPoC, CPoC, MPoC). By implementing code hardening and runtime application self-protection (RASP) as security protections, financial services companies upgrade their security and privacy practices, protect sensitive customer data, and minimize their overall risk profile. Furthermore, since mobile apps operate on untrusted devices, financial services regulators require companies to continuously monitor financial transactions to prevent fraud. Guardsquare offers real-time threat monitoring to help financial service companies keep track of the ever-evolving threat landscape when their apps are in use. This involves detecting any attempts to tamper with the app and feeding mobile app threat information back into security information and event management systems (SIEM). Additionally, by continuously testing the security posture of mobile apps with Guardsquare’s mobile application security testing (MAST) tool, mobile app developers can reduce the cost of pentesting required by regulatory bodies before releasing mobile financial service apps to the market.

Comprehensive mobile app security

Built on Proguard technology, Guardsquare provides comprehensive protection for both Android and iOS financial service apps, as well as platform-agnostic threat monitoring, mobile app security testing, and highly responsive support. With Guardsquare, financial services companies can give their users peace of mind by proving that security has been a priority throughout the software development lifecycle. With DexGuard for Android and iXGuard for iOS, Guardsquare empowers mobile financial services to prevent reverse engineering and tampering through multiple layers of code hardening and RASP checks. In addition to code hardening and RASP checks, Guardsquare also offers ThreatCast for real-time monitoring and AppSweep for security testing. The former provides visibility into apps post-publication, by tracking suspicious activity, and continuously improving security implementation. The latter allows developers to continuously scan their apps during the development process to find and fix vulnerabilities before they are exploited in the wild.

Trusted by leading financial services companies

From mobile payments and mobile banking to financial super apps and digital wallets, from North and Latin America to Australia, financial services companies rely on Guardsquare solutions to improve their mobile app security posture.

A Vietnamese SDK for mobile payment apps for iOS and Android devices needed to meet strict standards like PCI Security Standards. They chose to use DexGuard and iXGuard from Guardsquare, which helped them meet their compliance requirements and provide maximum protection for their customers. The implementation received positive feedback from the company's developers who had a good experience with Guardsquare's support and product management teams. A leading European bank sought to improve its fraud detection strategy and implemented Guardsquare's ThreatCast. The bank found that only a small percentage of its app users had rooted devices, but they noticed a strong connection between them and binary tamper attacks. Using ThreatCast, the bank was able to identify and act against malicious actors and improve its anti-fraud system.