Interviews | April 1, 2024

Incremental Point Products Can Hamper Security Outcomes


Appdome

Tom Tovar
Co-Creator and CEO

Appdome

Q1. What were the main takeaways from Appdome's recent global mobile app security survey? How have consumer expectations around mobile app security evolved over the time your company has been doing the survey?

Appdome's Consumer Expectations on Mobile App Security survey, now in its third year with 75,000 consumers interviewed, is seen as the industry's benchmark for measuring consumer attitudes regarding mobile app security, anti-fraud and other defenses needed in mobile apps.

Over the last 3 years, the survey reveals a keen awareness of cyber security threats and defenses. For example, in 2021, hacking was top of mind. In 2022, it was malware. In 2023, mobile fraud prevention. These requirements form a multi-layered stack of requirements mobile brands need to contend with. In 2023, an overwhelming majority of consumers (82.4%) are mandating a new approach to mobile fraud. They want brands to proactively prevent fraud before it happens, as opposed to reimbursing them after the fraud has occurred. This shift in the fraud protection approach all but renders existing anti-fraud solutions obsolete.

Other items remain constant, year in and year out. For example, a majority of consumers globally (56.2%) believe that mobile brands and app developers are responsible to protecting consumers from fraud and malware.

We've kicked off our 2024 survey initiative and believe this year, social engineering attacks will be top of mind for consumers. This is why at Black Hat Asia, we're introducing a new solution: The world's first real-time defense to social engineering attacks on mobile apps. With Appdome's Social Engineering Prevention solution, mobile brands now can break the cycle of AI-powered social engineering attacks on mobile apps.

Q2. What are Appdome's top priorities for enhancing its mobile app security platform over the next 12-18 months? What's driving the effort?

Appdome is squarely focused on helping mobile brands continuously deliver better protection with less work. As the mobile industry's only Unified Mobile App Defense Platform for Android and iOS apps, we allow mobile brands to build, monitor and respond automatically with machine learning across 300+ mobile app security, anti-fraud, anti-malware, anti-cheat, anti-social engineering, anti-bot, geo compliance, and other defenses in mobile apps with ease, right inside the mobile DevOps pipeline.

Recently, Nikesh Arora, the CEO of Palo Alto Networks said that enterprises are facing spending fatigue from point products. "Adding incremental point products," he said "is not driving better security outcomes." Customers are focusing more on ROI, total cost of ownership and platforms that empower continuous delivery of mobile app defense.

Across 1,100 successful deployments, Appdome has learned that the customer's ability to operationalize mobile app defense (and building a repeatable process, reporting and response around a platform) is as important as the defense features deployed inside mobile apps. Over the next 12-18 months, you'll see Appdome go further to offer advanced protection without work, more plug-ins to the DevOps ecosystem and more ways to monitor and respond to attacks in real time.

Q3. What does Appdome plan on highlighting at Black Hat Asia 2024? What do you want customers and organizations at the event to know about your company, its technologies and its strategy for mobile app security over the next several years?

We want to show cyber teams that they don't have to risk, hope, demand or depend on other parts of the organization to protect their mobile apps. We want to empower cyber teams with platform-level visibility, management and control over the mobile app defenses deployed into their mobile apps and give them a foothold in the CI/CD pipeline. We have 4 demo stations where anybody can build, monitor and respond with any of 300+ mobile app defenses in real time. Come to our booth 412 in the center of the Expo Hall and tell us what you are looking to achieve from an operational and/or protection standpoint with your mobile apps. In less than a minute, you can build that security model in any Android and iOS app and complete your project.

Sustaining Partners