Book Image

Android Application Security Essentials

By : Pragati Rai
Book Image

Android Application Security Essentials

By: Pragati Rai

Overview of this book

In today's techno-savvy world, more and more parts of our lives are going digital, and all this information is accessible anytime and anywhere using mobile devices. It is of the utmost importance that you understand and implement security in your apps that will reduce the likelihood of hazards that will wreck your users' experience. "Android Application Security Essentials" takes a deep look into Android security from kernel to the application level, with practical hands-on examples, illustrations, and everyday use cases. This book will show you how to overcome the challenge of getting the security of your applications right. "Android Application Security Essentials" will show you how to secure your Android applications and data. It will equip you with tricks and tips that will come in handy as you develop your applications.We will start by learning the overall security architecture of the Android stack. Securing components with permissions, defining security in a manifest file, cryptographic algorithms and protocols on the Android stack, secure storage, security focused testing, and protecting enterprise data on your device is then also discussed in detail. You will also learn how to be security-aware when integrating newer technologies like NFC and mobile payments into your Android applications. At the end of this book, you will understand Android security at the system level all the way to the nitty-gritty details of application security for securing your Android applications.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Android Application Security Essentials
Credits
Foreword
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Chapter 7. Securing Application Data

An application developer's credibility depends on how securely they handle their user's data. It is always prudent to not store huge amounts of user data on the device. It not only eats up memory but is a huge security risk as well. However, there are use cases where applications need to share data, cache application preferences, and store data on the device. This data could be private to the application or shared with other applications. An example of such data could be the user's preferred language or book category. This kind of data is kept by the application to enhance the user experience. It is useful within the application itself and is not shared with other applications. An example of shared data could be the wish list of books that the user keeps adding to the collection as the user browsers through the store. This data may or may not be shared with other applications.

Based on the privacy and kind of data, different storage mechanisms can be employed...