Vietnamese Electronic Payment Company Improves Mobile App Security with Guardsquare

The Company

This company is one of Vietnam’s top mobile and electronic payments providers. Working with a range of customers—from banks to telecommunications companies, and hundreds of eCommerce merchants—the company is well-established and trusted by its users and partners.

With its solutions, customers can complete mobile banking transactions, use SMS to query bank accounts, pay bills, book tickets, buy mobile phone credits, and much more.

The Challenge

Mobile applications are the cornerstone of the company's business.

With so much sensitive data flowing through the company’s mobile apps, the company wanted to ensure that its apps for both iOS and Android included maximum security protection in order to maintain user trust, avoid reputational damage, and minimize losses due to fraud. The company’s security team is tasked with ensuring that its apps are built with security top of mind, not as an afterthought.

We needed a solution that ensured our mobile apps could not be reverse-engineered or tampered with, especially via rooting, jailbreaking, or other methods. DexGuard and iXGuard met our security requirements and they were straightforward to implement because the team was already familiar with ProGuard

Chief Technology Officer(CTO)

Security is of utmost importance to us, because we process many financial transactions. Like all banks and financial institutions in Vietnam, we’re also regulated by the State Bank of Vietnam. We need to meet their standards for safety and security.

— Chief Technology Officer (CTO)

The security team set out to find and implement a security solution that would prevent reverse-engineering and app tampering. At the same time, they knew it was important to maintain a great customer experience with their mobile apps remaining fast and easy to use.

“We needed a security solution to protect our customers, our reputation, and the company from financial loss,” said the CTO.

The Solution

The company had been using ProGuard, Guardsquare’s free, open source solution for app shrinking and optimization. So when they started looking for more advanced security protection, it was natural that they turned to Guardsquare’s commercial products for Android and iOS: DexGuard and iXGuard.

The CTO was attracted to DexGuard and iXGuard’s multi-layered approach to security, including runtime application self-protection (RASP) and obfuscation.

“We needed a solution that ensured our mobile apps could not be reverseengineered or tampered with, especially via rooting, jailbreaking, or other methods,” said the Chief Technology Officer. “DexGuard and iXGuard met our security requirements and they were straightforward to implement because the team was already familiar with ProGuard.”

The Result

The company’s developers and DevOps engineers seamlessly incorporated DexGuard and iXGuard into their app development processes. Upon follow-up testing, its apps could not be reverseengineered—showing that RASP, obfuscation, and other code-hardening techniques offered by DexGuard and iXGuard were working well. The company also taps into Guardsquare’s team of experts for support, when needed.

With Guardsquare’s team on call, its team of developers and security experts can reach out at any time with questions and to provide feedback on DexGuard and iXGuard. Whether it’s a question about a specific mobile project, a bug fix, or optimizing configurations, the company can get fast support from the people who know the products best.

“The Guardsquare team is helpful and very responsive,” added their CTO.

Together, Guardsquare and this company are keeping Vietnam’s mobile users secure at the speed of the modern economy—a great way to pay it forward on secure financial services.

“As a company that operates in the finance space, security is one of our key priorities,” said the CTO. “With DexGuard and iXGuard implemented, our mobile apps are more secure. Most importantly, our customers’ sensitive information is protected within our mobile apps for Android and iOS devices.”

 

Developer friendly mobile app sec tools that:

Guardsquare offers the most complete approach to mobile application security on the market. Built on the open source ProGuard® technology, Guardsquare’s software integrates seamlessly across the development cycle. From app security testing to code hardening to real-time visibility into the threat landscape, Guardsquare solutions provide enhanced mobile application security from early in the development process through publication.

More than 900 customers worldwide across all major industries rely on Guardsquare to help them identify security risks and protect their mobile applications against reverse engineering and tampering.

The creators of ProGuard® | www.guardsquare.com