Today’s world is marked by the popularity of mobile application development. The development of these applications has expanded the reach of mobile phones that were previously used to make only voice calls. The popularity of smartphones in particular, the iPhones, led to the development of new applications like internet browsing, email and games etc. With the rapid growth and development of smartphones and PDAs, mobile technology has entered a golden period. The growth and development of the wireless industry resulted in an increase in the requirement for advanced applications. The latest technologies used today are Dot Net, C++ and J2EE and many companies offer secure applications for different platforms like: iPhone, BREW, Symbian, J2ME, etc.

Mobile businesses were also challenged to meet rising expectations for innovative and secure mobile applications. Ever-changing mobile technology coupled with rising customer expectations put additional pressure on developers. To stay ahead of the competition, many companies are trying to create more innovative and portable applications. This has led to a trend to outsource mobile app development to companies that specialize in developing apps for wireless devices.

The list of applications that can be outsourced are: wireless Internet security, video and image sharing, gaming, integrated billing solutions, location-based services, and content management. The companies are dedicated to developing applications using cutting-edge technologies and tools to provide consistent quality levels and foolproof standards. Secure mobile application development involves a variety of innovative and dynamic approaches, which can be made possible with the help of the latest mobile devices. In the development of applications for mobile devices, the biggest concern is the security of wireless devices. Mobile application security is developed with the aim of protecting phones from various threats such as viruses, malware, operating system vulnerabilities, etc.

There are two types of mobile security risks. One is the category of malicious functionality which can be defined as a list of unwanted mobile code behaviors. Second, vulnerabilities, which are design flaws that expose data to interception by attackers. To solve this problem, developers have implemented a systematic approach to ensure security in mobile applications. There are many resources available on the Internet that present case studies, code examples, and best practices for providing mobile application security. Much information on how to protect against vulnerabilities can be found in the latest smartphone and PDA platforms. Here are some steps developers can take to ensure mobile app security:

• Maximizing Isolation by Designing Authenticated Applications.
• Internal and external/removable storage lock.
• Work with sandboxing and sign and encrypt sensitive user information.
• Safeguards against viruses, worms, malware, and buffer overflow exploits are also involved in the security of wireless devices.
• Use the Google Android emulator, debugger, and third-party security tools for debugging.
• Configuring Apple iPhone interfaces to prevent overflow and SQL injection attacks.
• Use of private and public key cryptography on Windows Mobile devices.
• Enforcing granular security policies with the BlackBerry Enterprise Server
• Plug holes in Java Mobile Edition, SymbianOS and WebOS applications.
• Testing for XSS, CSRF, HTTP redirects and phishing attacks on mobile WAP/HTML applications.
• Identification and removal of threats from Bluetooth, SMS and GPS services.

With the help of the above guidelines, security can be provided to mobile and wireless devices. Today’s world is very dynamic and competitive and developers need more than just theoretical knowledge to prepare for the IT industry.