Strategies For a Financial App Development

Financial applications have become an essential part of our lifestyle within the last decade.

Fintech companies are using advanced technologies, including AI, blockchain, and IoT, to increase efficiency and enhance customer experience, all from mobile applications.

Despite all these advancements, they face severe challenges regarding privacy and security. In 2021, there were 62,976 cyber crime reports made by British businesses, resulting in a financial loss of £736.3 Million.

Numerous fintech companies suffered cyber-attacks also in the last few years. Mastercard reports that fintech is the biggest target of hackers and approximately 98% of fintech startups are vulnerable to cyber-attacks.

Financial applications need high-level security and smart strategies because they deal with sensitive user data such as phone numbers, credit scores, credit card numbers, etc. If there is any vulnerability or data breach, this information can be hacked and misused to do harmful activities, including transferring money, filing tax returns, opening bank accounts etc.

Strategies For Developing A Robust Financial App
Developing a financial app is a complex task that consumes significant time and money. You can work with the best app development firm in the UK that uses innovative technologies and follows effective security practices to develop powerful strategies. Here we highlight some crucial strategies that would help build a solid financial app.

Planning Before Development
You need to conduct thorough research to define the fundamentals and essential security considerations of your financial app. Coding and designing the app user interface will become much more manageable when you have a checklist of essential features required.

You can research your competitors to gain crucial market information and ensure your services provide better solutions. You can also conduct interviews with your target customer to get insights into their problems and plan how your financial app will solve them.

There is also a need to create a secure infrastructure by integrating a safe cloud merchant or using next-gen firewalls and proxy servers to protect the app from breaches and attacks.

Data Encryption
Data encryption is essential for a financial app to protect sensitive information during storage and transmission. Encryption is a method to encode data in a secured format that would be unreadable during unauthorized access and can be read only with the correct decryption key. It utilizes tools like cryptographic hash functions to enable the conversion of plaintext to ciphertext.

Data encryption is a must because it is mandatory according to many security regulations. Some common encryption algorithms are Triple Data Encryption Standard, Advanced Encryption Standard, Twofish, Blowfish, etc.

The best way to achieve this is to work with an experienced mobile app development company in the UK that will integrate strong encryption to protect data and assets on your financial app.

Ensure Infrastructural Security Strategies
Infrastructural security is indispensable for financial applications to protect assets and systems like data center resources, end-user devices, or cloud resources from cyber-attacks. Here are some strategies:

● Update all the operating systems and applications regularly to ensure maximum security
● Continuously monitor third-party systems to trace vulnerabilities
● Ensure proper configuration of routers to enable a robust perimeter defense
● Increase web server security by storing web files on a secure drive, incorporating a content security policy, etc.
● Use HTTPS SSL certificate for securing the user data
● Use load balancers to create a high-availability system that has reduced downtime

Using Advanced Security Authentication
If you are building a financial mobile app, you must incorporate security at each step of the application use. There are multiple security authentication systems that your mobile app development company in the UK must be aware of.

Here are some of them:

● Mandate complex passwords: A financial app dealing with money transactions must mandate strong passwords and regular changes because simple passwords can be easily hacked.

● 2-factor authentication: It provides greater security than a password-protected system and involves sending a one-time password to the user’s phone or using a push notification that could allow them to authenticate themselves and access the app.

● Monitoring and blocking: Developers should program the financial app to monitor transactions and freeze suspicious ones for future reviews. The system can block the activities and notify the users if there are any risky transactions.

● Log user activity: This enables logging user ID, transactions, IP address, geolocation, etc., and helps in reviewing incidents and tracing malicious actions.

Establish Trust
People are often uncomfortable using a new financial app because of numerous privacy risks. These types of apps deal with sensitive financial data and also involve the transfer of money. Users will never trust an application if safety measures are not assured. Therefore, proper highlighting of security and privacy features is a crucial consideration in app development.
Whether you are developing a banking, credit, or real estate app, you must ensure integration and representation of powerful privacy features that will keep sensitive information confidential and assure people of their safety. Emphasize the security features like data encryption or two-factor authentication in your marketing materials to achieve user trust and loyalty.

Writing Secure Code
All the advanced security measures will be useless if your financial app uses improper coding practices. Improper codes can lead to vulnerabilities and attacks by hackers allowing them to send unauthorized SQL queries to the app database and access the secured data.

Therefore your team, providing mobile app development in the UK, must scan and test the source code for flaws and vulnerabilities. They must write agile code, which can be efficiently executed on various mobile devices. Developers can use a security measure called input validation that prevents the injection of harmful queries into the source code for hacking user data. You should also supervise the data sent to external networks to avoid misuse. How Ficode Can Help You?

Ficode is a leading mobile application development company in the UK that offers innovative bespoke digital solutions. From developing websites, mobile apps, IoT, eCommerce, and custom software to designing marketing strategies, our services have helped numerous businesses reach the next level.
We design robust financial mobile apps with advanced safety measures for high-level security and privacy. Whether smart IOS or functional Android apps, our dedicated team uses cutting-edge technologies to build strong financial applications and provides the best mobile app solutions in the UK.

Contact us to learn more about our services. This post originally appeared on the Ficode website, and we republished it with permission from the author.

Read the full piece at: https://www.ficode.co.uk/blog/what-are-the-essential-strategies-for-a-financial-app-development