Mobile application development is quickly evolving from pet project to business necessity within corporate IT departments. But whether it's constructing an enterprise app store that caters to the demands of digital native employees, or a slate of customer-facing convenience tools, companies must keep data security top of mind when laying their blueprints.

Secure from the start
In many ways, the principles of sound desktop application development will translate to mobile platforms as well. According to BankInfoSecurity, IT teams will want to allocate adequate resources for architecture and design audits, code analysis, threat modeling and penetration testing. Conducting this bit of due diligence could be especially important in the mobile channel, however, as today's companies can quickly be tempted to rush a new app to market to outmaneuver the competition.

There are also several emerging data security risks that are unique to smartphones and tablets. The most obvious threats are physical, according to the news source, as these powerful portable devices are lost, stolen and damaged at comparatively high rates. With that in mind, segmenting apps from devices has become a crucial means of protecting sensitive data.

Sustainable security strategies
According to TechTarget, hosting mobile apps in the cloud is already looking like the preferred strategy among BYOD-enabled offices. The agile technology affords the advantages of scalability and cost efficiency, but it's important to remember the risks associated with welcoming a third party into the data protection equation. By encrypting assets prior to sending them to the cloud to read on mobile devices, companies can virtually eliminate the risk of their new business partners compromising security plans. Maintaining this protective formatting around data at rest and in motion will promote safer mobile access for intended viewers.

Finally, companies will have to keep up with the vulnerabilities that emerge in each distinct mobile operating system they choose to support. For instance, the sheer popularity of the Android platform makes it nearly impossible for companies to avoid. But the high vulnerability and infection rates associated with the more open architecture introduce a number of data security questions that must be answered from the outset.

Apple's operating systems carries its own share of risks as well. According to BankInfoSecurity, few administrators are aware that a screenshot of any application about to be backgrounded is saved to the device's file system for quick recall. If that image happened to contain sensitive business information, risk ratings would instantly multiply.