What is application shielding?

Application shielding refers to a set of technologies that modify an application’s source, byte, or binary code, making it more resistant to intrusion, tampering, reverse engineering, and malware attacks. Unlike security solutions that monitor and test vulnerabilities, application shielding can detect and prevent real-time attacks against mobile applications.

How does application shielding work?

Application shielding proactively protects applications. Examples of this include code obfuscation, white-box cryptography, and anti-tampering.

• Code obfuscation makes it difficult to understand code. This protects intellectual property and prevents reverse engineering. Code obfuscation may involve encrypting code, altering physical infrastructure code, and renaming class and variable names.
• White boxing or white-box cryptography protects and hides encryption keys. This makes it harder for hackers to find the original key, despite cryptographic algorithms being open to modification.
• Anti-tampering prevents hackers from figuring out the decryption method that grants them access. It involves a combination of techniques, including obfuscation, encryption, and protection of hash codes.

When your app is shielded, the app is self-protecting, and protection is restricted to the application alone.

Why it is essential to use shielding for applications

When your mobile is shielded, it protects your mobile apps against malware, and safeguards sensitive information. When integrated into the application environment, the runtime application self-protection (RASP) technology detects and prevents real-time attacks. Key benefits include reduced risk of attacks, insulation against malware lurking on devices, no compromises on security and user experience, as well as PSD2, EMVCo and GDPR compliance.

How to integreate shielding for apps

A common concern when implementing new security features is the complexity of integration. Integrating application shielding into mobile apps seems to be an exception. You can incorporate application shielding automatically, with no need for programming, and with a near-zero impact on development resources. With Promon, you can upload and secure Android or iOS apps in minutes by using our integration tool, or an SDK that is integrated into the app. Once secured, the app is immediately ready for distribution via public or enterprise app stores.