Mobile Application Security: Threats, Policies, and Best Practices
This paper examines the growing security challenges associated with mobile applications in organizational settings. It reviews literature identifying major threat vectors, including malware, unsecured networks, and insufficient security policies, and discusses six key reasons why mobile app security remains inadequate in many organizations. The paper also presents practical policy recommendations from industry consultants covering system updates, device configurations, app validation, and network safety. With mobile app usage surpassing traditional computer-based internet access, the paper argues that organizations of all sizes must prioritize and formalize mobile application security policies to protect proprietary, sensitive, and personal data from increasingly sophisticated attacks.
- Introduction: Overview of mobile app security research scope
- Research Summary: Growing mobile app threats and attack statistics
- Identification and Discussion of Policy Issues: Six organizational failures driving security gaps
- Recommendations for Improving Policy Implementation: Practical security policies across system and network domains
- Conclusion: Key findings and call for organizational policy action
✍️ How to write this paper — guide, tools & examples ▾
What makes this paper effective
- The paper moves logically from problem identification to policy analysis to actionable recommendations, giving it a clear and practical structure.
- It grounds its claims in specific statistics — such as the 16 million attacks in 2014 and the 25% year-over-year increase — lending credibility to the urgency it conveys.
- The use of a formatted policy recommendation table (Table 1) translates abstract security advice into concrete, implementable steps, making the paper useful to practitioners as well as students.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper effectively synthesizes multiple secondary sources to build a cumulative argument. Rather than relying on a single authority, it layers findings from industry publications, academic journals, and professional consultants, then integrates them into a coherent policy narrative. This technique — source triangulation — strengthens the paper's conclusions by showing convergence across independent bodies of evidence.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a brief framing introduction, followed by a research summary that establishes the scale and nature of the mobile security threat. The third section identifies six specific policy deficiencies drawing on survey data. The fourth section pivots to solutions, presenting a detailed table of recommendations organized by security domain (system, configurations, apps, and network). The conclusion synthesizes the key takeaways without introducing new material, reinforcing the paper's applied focus.
Introduction
Today, growing numbers of companies of all sizes and types are relying on mobile applications to improve their performance in ways that provide a competitive advantage. This approach, however, is not without its constraints — most especially the security of the data that is accessed and shared on mobile devices. This paper reviews the relevant literature to identify potential security threats to mobile applications and discusses associated policy issues, followed by recommendations for improving policy implementation. A summary of the research and important findings concerning mobile application security is provided in the conclusion.
Research Summary
Mobile applications, or "apps," are "a set of coded instructions used by a mobile device to solve a problem" (Zamfiroiu, 2014, p. 131). Some indication of the increasing popularity of mobile apps can be discerned from recent trends in their use: users in the United States were spending more time accessing the Internet using mobile apps than they were using personal computers (Zamfiroiu, 2014). One of the main factors driving this growth in popularity is the ability of mobile apps to consolidate disparate data sources into a single point of access that can then be used to manipulate data in virtually limitless ways according to the general or unique needs of the user (Pocatilu & Boja, 2013).
This same attribute, however, is also a major security vulnerability that can severely compromise proprietary, sensitive, and personal data. Indeed, many industry analysts suggest that mobile application security represents the major constraint to the deployment and administration of these systems (Dospinescu & Strainu, 2014). For instance, Crosman (2012) emphasizes that, "I think the biggest threat we'll see down the road is a growing up in the sophistication of attacks against mobile devices. We've said for some time that as mobile devices combine personal and enterprise data, they become a more lucrative target" (p. 37).
Unfortunately, this prediction has been borne out by the facts, and there has been a steady increase in mobile application attacks (Unsecured mobile apps are putting organizations at risk, 2015). There were more than 16 million attacks against mobile devices in the United States in 2014 alone, representing a 25% increase compared to 2013 (Unsecured mobile apps, 2015). Moreover, when any type of vulnerability is identified in an app, that vulnerability can also be exploited against all apps of the same type system-wide (Unsecured mobile apps, 2015).
The fact that mobile apps are dedicated and remain online also creates an additional point of vulnerability. In this regard, the editors of Information Management note that, "[Mobile apps are] constantly connected to the internet and they're updated a lot. Mobile has all the information [hackers are] looking for in one spot" (Unsecured mobile apps, 2015, p. 8). Some of the more well-known malware that has been used to target mobile apps includes "Not Compatible" and "Heartbleed." Despite the growing threat, far too few companies have taken the steps needed to implement policies that ensure the security of their mobile systems (Unsecured mobile apps, 2015). These issues are discussed further below.
Conclusion
The research was consistent in showing that the use of mobile applications is on the increase, with more users now accessing the Internet with their mobile devices than with traditional computers. An unfortunate but predictable consequence of this increase in mobile app usage has been a growing threat against the security of mobile devices, as they aggregate a wide array of data that can be exploited in countless ways to the detriment of organizations. The research also showed, however, that there are cost-effective, common-sense, and technical steps that organizations can take to improve their mobile app security, and that these steps can inform policy development and implementation.
References
Crosman, P. (2012, May 30). viaForensics offers practical advice on securing mobile apps. American Banker, 177(83), 37.
Dospinescu, O. & Strainu, R-M. (2014, October 1). Implementing monitoring systems in mobile applications — a case study. Informatica Economica, 18(4), 120–123.
Pocatilu, P. & Boja, C. (2013, April 1). Syncing mobile applications with cloud storage services. Informatica Economica, 17(2), 96–101.
Tips for better mobile security. (2016). NowSecure. Retrieved from https://info.nowsecure.com/rs/nowsecure/images/20%20Tips%20to%20better%20mobile%20security_NowSecure.pdf
Unsecured mobile apps are putting organizations at risk. (2015, May/June). Information Management, 49(3), 8.
Zamfiroiu, A. (2014, January 1). Factors influencing the quality of mobile applications. Informatica Economica, 18(1), 131–134.
Always verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.