You may not want to rely on the Food & Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) app approval system: Roughly 90 percent of Android health-care apps have been hacked, and 22 percent of them were FDA-approved. That information comes from the latest State of Mobile App Security report from Arxan Technologies, which attributed the high rate to a lack of information, security training and resources in the health-care field.
Of health-care apps, none that were Apple iOS-based have been hacked. But, looking at all apps, the risk is close between Android and iOS. Looking at the top 100 paid apps, 97 percent of those that are Android-based have been hacked, and 87 percent of those that are iOS-based have been hacked.
Because health-care apps tend to hold confidential patient information, these breaches present serious risk. “Make application self-protection a new investment priority, ahead of perimeter and infrastructure protection,” says Joseph Feiman in a Gartner Maverick Research report, “Stop Protecting Your Apps; It’s Time for Apps to Protect Themselves.”
Click here for an infographic that shows the state of app security, and contact us if you are looking to make sure that your apps are secure.
