Posted by on Tuesday, July 6th, 2021

Watch the AppSec Decoded video to learn about the surprising findings discovered in our mobile application security report.

In a time when the world was dealing with lockdowns and social distancing measures, we turned to technology to carry out our daily activities—whether that was productivity apps to conduct business or gaming apps to pass the time in isolation.

So it should come as no surprise that the use of mobile apps spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to App Annie, mobile game usage increased 40% year-over-year in the second quarter of 2020. 

What does this mean for mobile application security? The Synopsys Cybersecurity Research Center (CyRC) set out to explore the state of mobile apps, analyzing over 3,300 of the most popular Android apps on the Google Play Store during the first quarter of 2021. The new report, “Peril in a Pandemic: The State of Mobile Application Security” examined the prevalence of known software vulnerabilities, information leakage, and excessive mobile device permissions to determine if today’s popular apps are reasonably secure and if developers are prioritizing security and privacy when determining which device permissions and data their applications can access.

In this episode of AppSec Decoded, we spoke with Tim Mackey, principal security strategist at the CyRC, to learn about the state of mobile application security during the pandemic.

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