Photo by CDC on Unsplash

In recent weeks we have been following the race to build contact tracing smartphone apps in the worldwide fight against COVID-19. Such apps are a powerful weapon in controlling the growth of infection by automating the scaling of the contact tracing process. By tracking interactions between people, the apps allow instant user notification if they have recently been in close proximity with anyone later diagnosed with COVID-19. This allows immediate social distancing or self isolation measures to be instituted for that potential infected user, slowing the spread of the virus. It would have been better if these apps were widely available during the initial phase of the pandemic, but they may still have a crucial role to play as we eventually emerge from full lockdown We have some specific suggestions about how this can be achieved while maintaining citizen anonymity.

Joint solution to ensure APIs are built correctly and used legitimately.  

Happy to announce that we are partnering with the great people at Positive Technologies to provide comprehensive protection across both Mobile and Web Channels. See the full press release for details on the API security partners.

SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA, USA, October 31, 2017 /EINPresswire.com/ -- CriticalBlue, provider of the award winning Approov mobile API protection solution, today announced the successful deployment of Approov within the Nimses social media platform. Fast growing mobile businesses are an attractive target for bad actors who will attack the rich APIs between mobile apps and enterprises’ backends to attempt exploits such as scraping of competitive data, fake account onboarding, fraud, DDoS and account takeover. Time and again, basic encryption and embedded secrets in mobile apps have proven to be insufficient barriers against these automated scripts and hackers.

CriticalBlue is delighted to announce that it has won the 2017 API Award in the API security category.

CriticalBlue is delighted to announce that it has been included in the 2017 Gartner Cool Vendor Report for Mobile App Development. One of the 4 Key Findings in the report is:

(Image courtesy of Steve F)

So as I type this, while obsessively checking the server logs, and #awsoutage on twitter, I am reminded of the Benjamin Franklin quote: "By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail". Currently Amazon Web Services (AWS) is suffering from an unspecified problem with S3, their Simple Storage Service. This is a place where companies store files and underpins a fair chunk of the internet. Lots of websites will host their content on S3 and many services depend upon it to a degree. AWS has a huge share of the cloud service market so any outage by them is a big deal.

This presentation was delivered by David at APIDays in Paris last month and it covers the topic of protecting mobile APIs and apps in a banking context.