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How Do Mobile Applications Enhance Security? An Exploratory Analysis of Use Cases and Provided Information

Irdin Pekaric, Clemens Sauerwein, Simon Laichner, Ruth Breu

TL;DR

This work tackles the lack of a comprehensive, cross‑platform view of mobile security applications on Android and iOS by conducting an exploratory systematic analysis of 410 apps and focusing on the top 20 per store. It maps each app to six CSF‑based use cases and a taxonomy of security information types, revealing six common use cases and diverse information provision with many apps offering desktop or web extensions. Key findings show high popularity and heavy permission requirements, a predominance of Protect and Detect functions, and a notable absence of threat intelligence sharing apps, with significant implications for developers, researchers, and users. The study provides open resources to spur future research and practical improvements in mobile security tooling and privacy‑preserving design.

Abstract

The ubiquity of mobile applications has increased dramatically in recent years, opening up new opportunities for cyber attackers and heightening security concerns in the mobile ecosystem. As a result, researchers and practitioners have intensified their research into improving the security and privacy of mobile applications. At the same time, more and more mobile applications have appeared on the market that address the aforementioned security issues. However, both academia and industry currently lack a comprehensive overview of these mobile security applications for Android and iOS platforms, including their respective use cases and the security information they provide. To address this gap, we systematically collected a total of 410 mobile applications from both the App and Play Store. Then, we identified the 20 most widely utilized mobile security applications on both platforms that were analyzed and classified. Our results show six primary use cases and a wide range of security information provided by these applications, thus supporting the core functionalities for ensuring mobile security.

How Do Mobile Applications Enhance Security? An Exploratory Analysis of Use Cases and Provided Information

TL;DR

This work tackles the lack of a comprehensive, cross‑platform view of mobile security applications on Android and iOS by conducting an exploratory systematic analysis of 410 apps and focusing on the top 20 per store. It maps each app to six CSF‑based use cases and a taxonomy of security information types, revealing six common use cases and diverse information provision with many apps offering desktop or web extensions. Key findings show high popularity and heavy permission requirements, a predominance of Protect and Detect functions, and a notable absence of threat intelligence sharing apps, with significant implications for developers, researchers, and users. The study provides open resources to spur future research and practical improvements in mobile security tooling and privacy‑preserving design.

Abstract

The ubiquity of mobile applications has increased dramatically in recent years, opening up new opportunities for cyber attackers and heightening security concerns in the mobile ecosystem. As a result, researchers and practitioners have intensified their research into improving the security and privacy of mobile applications. At the same time, more and more mobile applications have appeared on the market that address the aforementioned security issues. However, both academia and industry currently lack a comprehensive overview of these mobile security applications for Android and iOS platforms, including their respective use cases and the security information they provide. To address this gap, we systematically collected a total of 410 mobile applications from both the App and Play Store. Then, we identified the 20 most widely utilized mobile security applications on both platforms that were analyzed and classified. Our results show six primary use cases and a wide range of security information provided by these applications, thus supporting the core functionalities for ensuring mobile security.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 17 sections, 6 figures, 2 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Related Work
  3. Proposed Method
  4. Search Strategy
  5. Application Selection
  6. Application Analysis
  7. Results
  8. Overview of Mobile Security Applications
  9. Use Cases of Mobile Security Applications (RQ1)
  10. Provided Security Information (RQ2)
  11. Discussion
  12. Key Findings and Implications
  13. Development Recommendations
  14. Limitations
  15. Conclusions
  16. ...and 2 more sections

Figures (6)

  • Figure 1: Overview of the Search and Selection Strategies
  • Figure 2: Timeline of Applications' Release Until Last Updates
  • Figure 3: Number of Users vs. Average Ratings
  • Figure 4: Distribution of Required Permissions and Use-cases
  • Figure 5: Overview of the Key Security Functions for Each of the Stores (for all the Selected Mobile Applications)
  • ...and 1 more figures