Mobile App Security Assessment: Identifying Risks Before Attackers Do

Misconfigurations in storage and encryption settings can put your mobile apps at risk, but so can social engineering attacks.

Mobile devices are powerful productivity tools, enabling your staff to work from almost anywhere. They can also be security risks, sharing sensitive data outside of a tightly controlled office environment. If smartphones and tablets are integral to your organization’s day-to-day workflows, a mobile application security assessment should be part of your cybersecurity strategy. By analyzing the mobile apps you rely on, you’ll be able to identify and address potential security holes before threat actors can exploit them.

Security professionals and IT administrators are already familiar with some common problems in mobile apps. Some Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) contain vulnerabilities or misconfigurations, while other programs don’t store or encrypt data properly. Still, the biggest issue may not be with the apps themselves, but with the humans who use them. Phishing and other forms of social engineering are especially prominent on smartphones and tablets. To secure your organization’s mobile apps, you’ll also need to educate, protect, and empower your workforce.

What to look for in a mobile application security assessment

A mobile application security assessment is essentially a specialized form of penetration testing that zeroes in on the mobile apps that your organization uses, rather than your entire cybersecurity framework. Because this is a much smaller and more specific job than pen testing, you don’t necessarily have to hire an outside contractor.

If you want to perform the assessment yourself, first make a list of every mobile app that your organization currently uses. Depending on your security software suite, you may also have some visibility into your employees’ personal apps. These might be worth investigating as well, since dating, shopping, and streaming apps are often easier to compromise than productivity programs. Social media and messaging apps are also obvious pathways for social engineering schemes.

Once you have a list of apps, look for the following issues:

Insecure APIs

At their most basic level, APIs allow different pieces of software to communicate with one another. Using existing APIs rather than building them from scratch can save developers a lot of time and effort. In fact, the average app uses up to 50 different APIs, many of which are open-source. These factors mean that APIs are often insecure, and it may be difficult to pin down exactly where the vulnerability lies. Common API issues include Broken Object Level Authorization (BOLA) and improper user authentication.

Rooting out insecure APIs requires both technical expertise and specialized tools. Even then, if your organization didn’t develop the app in question, you may not be able to fix the problem directly. You can make an informed decision about the app’s risks, though, and shore up your other mobile security practices to compensate.

Improper data storage

Some data storage locations are safer than others, especially on mobile devices. If an app saves unencrypted files to local storage, for example, anyone with access to the device could theoretically copy and share them. Depending on the permissions they require, mobile apps might even upload data to public servers or enable file sharing with nearby devices. If there’s any chance that an app might handle sensitive data, check to see where it stores files and how it manages access controls. Look for cloud servers with strong authorization and encryption protocols.

Weak encryption

There are more than 3,000 data breaches every year. These events cost millions of dollars in damages and put hundreds of millions of people at risk for identity theft. While there’s no way to completely eliminate your risk of a data breach, you can do a lot to minimize the potential damage. Encrypting files is an effective way to render your sensitive data unreadable, even if threat actors manage to steal your files. However, some mobile apps use outdated encryption algorithms, which may be vulnerable to man-in-the-middle or brute-force attacks. If an app you rely on has weak encryption standards, consider encrypting your own files before storing them.

Human layer vulnerabilities

In the first quarter of 2025, Lookout clocked more than 1,000,000 phishing attacks on enterprise users and more than 193,000 malicious and vulnerable apps on enterprise mobile devices. In spite of these numbers, almost one-third of the organizations we surveyed have not trained their employees to identify and report phishing scams.

People are a vital part of your mobile cybersecurity framework, as they’re the ones interacting with the apps. Mobile apps encourage employees to respond to messages quickly, follow links without verifying URLs, and enter login information whenever prompted. These are easy habits for threat actors to exploit. To secure your organization’s mobile apps, educate the people who use them.

Mobile EDR can identify and combat risks

A proactive IT department and an educated workforce can be huge assets in your mobile cybersecurity strategy. You can complement their efforts with a comprehensive mobile endpoint detection response (EDR) solution. Mobile EDR tools constantly analyze smartphones and tablets, feeding data back to IT personnel and scanning for potential threats or compromised devices.

EDR isn’t a new strategy, but traditional systems tended to focus on stationary desktops connected to a single network or server. Because smartphones and tablets move across so many different networks, identifying devices based on location or IP address alone can be tricky. Furthermore, while all EDR systems can identify malware, not every one will pick up on mobile-specific threats, such as phishing or overly permissive apps.

Modern mobile EDR solutions are more sophisticated. They can identify social engineering attacks as they happen, notifying users about fraudulent messages or suspicious links. Mobile EDR systems can also give administrators full visibility into each device on a network, constantly assessing each one’s risk level. Some solutions even leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) algorithms to pick up suspicious behavior patterns that a human might not spot.

A mobile EDR can be a valuable component in a mobile application security assessment. Run an analysis of your organization’s mobile devices and the apps they use, then see if you can find patterns among the risks. Having all of this information in a single dashboard can help you make informed, data-driven decisions about potential weaknesses in your organization’s cybersecurity.

Protect your organization’s human layer with mobile EDR

If you’re ready to run a mobile application security assessment at your organization, start by downloading the Lookout Mobile EDR Playbook. This e-book poses valuable questions about how your organization monitors device health, gathers new threat intelligence, and enforces zero-trust protocols. You’ll also learn how a mobile EDR solution can defend both your sensitive data and your employees from a variety of threats, from phishing to malware. With the right tools, you can safeguard both your sensitive data and your human layer.