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Finding the Balance Between Security and Customer Experience

With the number of smartphone users projected to reach 6.5 billion by 2029, the demand for user-friendly apps has never been higher. Apps that make it easy for customers to find what they need are essential—but only if they’re secure. Compromised components can introduce vulnerabilities that hackers exploit, putting user data and company reputations at risk.

The question is: how can organizations balance a seamless customer experience with robust security? Getting it right builds trust, turning new users into loyal customers, and generating positive word of mouth that fuels growth. PreEmptive helps businesses achieve this balance with security solutions integrated throughout the entire software development life cycle (SDLC).

Here are practical tips on how to prioritize security without sacrificing user experience.

Insights on Balancing Customer Experience with Security

Organizations can use practical, transparent measures to manage cybersecurity risks without disrupting user experience. Ensuring smooth access for customers is crucial, but avoiding overly complex security steps is also key; otherwise, frustrated users may leave for competitors.

For instance, multilayered security practices like multifactor authentication (MFA) offer secondary validation beyond passwords. When customers access sensitive information through a banking app, MFA ensures they are legitimate users. Other best practices, like data encryption, protect information during storage and transmission, keeping it hidden from unauthorized parties. Regular security audits and customer communications on security measures also build trust.

When balancing ease of use with security, app development should consider the following:

  • Use an intuitive design that adapts to different screens
  • Integrate security features that make sense to the user
  • Recognize device types and adjust interactions accordingly
  • Leverage biometric options like facial recognition or fingerprints
  • Provide customers a way to report suspicious activity

Empowering customers with security knowledge also benefits businesses, providing valuable insights into potential threats and new hacking tactics.

3 Tips for Balancing Customer Experience with Security

Many companies now adopt a shift-left approach to security, embedding it in the early planning rather than as a late-stage addition. Security tools can help developers detect issues while coding, significantly reducing the cost and complexity of later-stage fixes.

Here are three additional trends to help organizations provide user-friendly applications with integrated security.

1. Understand the Customer’s Appetite for Risk

One of the most effective ways for organizations to assess how much risk customers are willing to take is through behavioral analytics. This methodology involves gathering information on how customers react to various security features, such as CAPTCHA. It can help you locate the pain points customers experience that might cause them to abandon the application. 

For example, if a customer has trouble scanning their fingerprint, that can indicate that you need to update or replace the technology used to manage MFA. Businesses can also leverage machine learning (ML) algorithms to track usage patterns. That information can be essential in knowing how to adjust security protocols and boost user experience.

You can anticipate these problems using PreEmptive tools to locate issues early in development or within the CI/CD pipeline. That way, problems don’t impact the final product to the point where it lowers user opinion of an application. You can also add protections to prevent hackers from tampering with or reverse-engineering your solutions. By using PreEmptive tools in the CI/CD pipeline, developers can quickly catch and mitigate potential vulnerabilities, minimizing their impact on user experience. PreEmptive’s protection solutions also prevent hackers from reverse-engineering code, reducing the risk of tampering or data theft.

2. Leverage Machine Learning and Adaptive Authentication

In addition to tracking user patterns, machine learning can enhance traditional security methods such a passwords and MFA. Adaptive authentication is an approach that adjusts the need for authentication based on risks. That allows organizations to move beyond a one-size-fits-all approach to authentication.

Instead, adaptive authentication accounts for a variety of factors:

  • What device gets used
  • The time someone is attempting access to an account
  • Past user behavior patterns
  • The location of a user

Combining machine learning and adaptive authentication allows organizations to move beyond using only a single approach to authentication. You can evaluate each attempt individually to see if it deviates from previous patterns. If so, that can trigger additional authentication steps, such as security questions or biometric verification, that lock an account if validation is not provided. 

PreEmptive offers server and desktop security to protect your applications from hacker probing. We make it harder for bad actors to exploit issues within your code that allow them to bypass authentication measures.

3. Differentiate Proactive from Reactive Protection

Proactive security measures help organizations locate and mitigate application vulnerabilities before they get exploited by cybercriminals. Here are some examples of proactive security measures. 

  • Code obfuscation: Obfuscation is a technique that makes it harder for humans to understand software code while allowing it to execute as intended. 
  • Runtime application self-protection (RASP) tools: These security solutions are integrated into an application’s runtime environment and monitor its behavior and data flow. They look for malicious attempts, such as debugging or tampering with an application, and send alerts to administrators. 

Reactive security measures kick in as soon as a threat is detected. They’re used to identify what’s happening, provide a response, and work to mitigate the fallout. For this purpose, companies can employ several tactics:

  • Incident detection and response (IDR) tools
  • Disaster recovery planning
  • Forensic analysis

PreEmptive’s Dotfuscator protects applications against attacks such as code injection and data tampering. It adds misleading code constructs and eliminates code patterns, preventing hackers from replicating source code. Our RASP technology allows you to track application activity and stay on top of any attempts to tamper with your code.

Make Security Part of the Customer Experience with PreEmptive

You don’t have to choose between a top-notch user experience and robust security. In today’s digital landscape, shortcuts in cybersecurity are not an option. PreEmptive’s obfuscation and RASP technologies help businesses secure their applications, providing users with seamless, trustworthy experiences.

Explore the benefits of PreEmptive for your applications by requesting a free trial today.

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