Approov Blog

Business (3)

Anyone looking for a snapshot of how the COVID-19 pandemic is fuelling an e-commerce boom need look no further than Shopify’s recently released Q2 2020 financials. The platform witnessed a 71% jump in new store creation compared to the previous quarter this year. Every leading performance indicator was up in high double, or even triple, digits compared to Q2 2019 including sales (97%), gross merchandise volume (119%), merchant solutions revenue (148%), and adjusted per-share earnings (950%). Read Full Story

As we discussed in our previous blog, there is a strong argument to be made that Bluetooth Contact tracing is too Blue Sky. The technology has been overhyped, over promised and, in the UK at least , the delivery so bungled that public confidence has been completely undermined. In the meantime we are stepping back to manual contact tracing efforts, with privacy characteristics that don’t come anywhere close to the lofty aspirations of decentralised contact tracing apps. Read Full Story

Spending large amounts of money on in-house security may not yield as great a reduction in risk as you might hope. A big investment might only result in marginal improvements -- especially with the high price of cyber security labour in the current skills shortage. Finding the right mix of security options is something of a balancing act, and cloud-based security or SaaS security (Security as a Service, or SECaaS) can offer an alternative. Read Full Story

Mobile applications play an increasingly important role in our lives -- and the current global lockdown due to the COVID-19 situation has led to a surge in the download of financial technology or fintech apps. According to research by the deVere Group, the coronavirus pandemic has fuelled a massive 72% rise in the use of fintech apps in Europe. But while this spike in adoption and usage provides encouraging news for the fintech industry, these mobile apps present a real threat, with hackers looking for new ways to bypass software defences, or to exploit security vulnerabilities. Read Full Story

With smartphone usage now a global phenomenon, mobile apps and connectivity are common denominators binding people the world over. And as the world’s nations grapple with the common dilemma of how to manage the ongoing pandemic of coronavirus or COVID-19, it’s little wonder that governments and health authorities across the planet are turning to mobile app technology as a weapon in their crisis management arsenal. Read Full Story

At a time when the world could use some good news, any good news, the central health crisis continues to get compounded by a persistent wave of cyberattacks targeted at companies and their employees. Not even healthcare institutions and agencies at the center of responding to the emergency have been spared, with the World Health Organization, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and even a UK-based coronavirus testing facility being targeted by cyber profiteers. Read Full Story

This is the final article in our 3 part review of trends in the Mobility market. In case you missed them, the first part can be found here and the second part can be found here. In 2015, “white hat” hackers remotely attacked a Jeep Cherokee and left it paralyzed on the side of a highway. They returned in 2016 with an in-vehicle hack to prove that things could get much worse. In 2017, researchers from an IT security company analyzed some of the most popular mobile apps from car manufacturers to find that every app was vulnerable to attacks in some shape or form. In 2018, the number of Black Hat attacks overtook White Hat incidents for the first time in the history of Smart Mobility. Read Full Story

This is the second article in our 3 part review of trends in the Mobility market. If you missed the first part, you can find it here. Electric vehicles (EVs), with a mere 1.7% market share in 2019, are still at least a few years away from going mass market. This segment is expected to hit mass market adoption by 2025 and then build up to a share of about half of all new car sales by 2040. Read Full Story

This is the first article in a 3 part review of trends in the Mobility market. The complete series can be found here. The Mobility market has become a key sector for Approov deployment over the last few years. Therefore we thought it would be interesting to take a look at this market in detail, to understand its underlying forces and trends. This is the first of a series of 3 blog articles on the topic. Last year, the global car market posted its sharpest decline in sales – by 3 million according to one study, 4 million according to another – since the financial crisis of the last decade. The worse news is that neither study predicts a quick return to normal growth any time soon. In fact, 2022 is the earliest estimate for a global recovery. Read Full Story

As APIs become a critical part of almost every business, the need to build a robust API security strategy grows infinitely. API calls account for 83% of web traffic, according to the Akamai 2019 [state of the internet] / security: Retail Attacks and API Traffic report. The largest API directory now lists nearly 22,000 public APIs, up from 12,000 in 2015. A majority of companies now consider APIs to be critical to business strategy and imperative for developing partner ecosystems, enhancing customer value and creating new revenue opportunities. Cloud Elements, in its third annual State of API Integration report, recently found that businesses planned to deploy an average of 18 new APIs in 2019, compared to just 11.5 in 2018. Read Full Story