How Do You Secure Your Mobile App?
Key takeaways
- The mobile app binary is readable on the device, so a secret embedded in the app is a secret published to anyone who unpacks it, which is why API secrets belong on your server.
- Use the Android keystore and the iOS keychain for tokens and keys, and keep refresh tokens revocable server-side so a stolen device cannot hold a long-lived session.
- Enforce TLS 1.2 or above for all traffic and disable cleartext traffic, since free Wi-Fi networks in Indian cafes and airports are a common interception point.
- Certificate pinning stops a proxy with a rogue certificate from reading traffic, but a wrongly implemented pin bricks the app on the next certificate rotation, so plan the pin with a backup pin.
- Root, jailbreak and emulator detection is a signal, not a control, so treat it as one input to a risk decision rather than as the security boundary itself.
As of 24 October 2026: the service descriptions, prices and turnaround figures on this page are current.
How do I store data safely on the device?
Use the platform's secure storage and nothing else. On Android that is the Android keystore with encrypted shared preferences, and on iOS the keychain, and both keep cryptographic material out of reach of a normal file dump or a backup extraction. Never put an access token, a password, an OTP or a card detail in SharedPreferences, a plist, a SQLite file, a log line or a crash report. Prefer holding the access token in memory only, with a short expiry and a server-side refresh, so a memory dump expires within minutes. Encrypt any cached personal data with a key that lives in the keystore.
What does certificate pinning do, and how do I do it safely?
Certificate pinning makes the app accept only the public key it expects for a given host, so an intercepting proxy, even one with a certificate a normal device would trust, cannot read the traffic. That matters because a company proxy, an antivirus product or a free Wi-Fi captive portal that re-signs traffic would otherwise see everything. Implement it in the network layer, with a pin for the current key and a backup pin for the next one, and treat the backup pin as mandatory. Ship a plan for key rotation before you ship the pin, because a missed rotation date is the classic way pinning takes an app offline for every user at once.
What should I check before the next store release?
A short release gate, repeatable every build. Confirm that no secret is hardcoded in the binary and that the app does not log tokens, personal data or full request bodies to the system log. Confirm that cleartext HTTP is disallowed, that all traffic uses TLS 1.2 or above, and that the exported components do not leak data to other apps or widgets. Confirm that deep links and intent handlers validate their input, since an exported activity is an entry point on Android. Confirm that the build has no debug flag, no test endpoint and no verbose logging left on. Then run a static and a dynamic analysis pass against the release build.
| Control | Protects against | Check before release |
|---|---|---|
| Keystore and keychain for tokens | Local credential theft | Inspect app storage for plain tokens |
| No secrets in the app binary | Reverse engineering of API keys | Run strings on the release build |
| TLS 1.2 minimum, no cleartext | Interception on hostile networks | Test with a proxy and check the pin |
| Certificate pinning with a backup pin | Rogue proxy interception | Verify the pin and the rotation plan |
| Server-side authorisation only | Tampered client requests | Replay a request with another user id |
| Root, jailbreak and emulator signal | Tampering on a compromised device | Confirm the app degrades safely |
| No tokens or personal data in logs | Log and crash-report leakage | Capture logs during a full flow |
What are the frequently asked questions?
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