CriticalBlue Selected as a 2017 Gartner Cool Vendor

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:

"Trust is an essential element of digital business. Without it, consumers and employees are left wondering if the apps they are using are genuine or compromised."

The full Gartner report can be accessed here (subscription required).

Approov allows a mobile app to unambiguously prove its authenticity to the API backend used to serve its content. Tampered and unofficial apps, or scripts spoofing traffic app, can be detected and blocked from accessing business assets. Approov is mobile security which does not rely on embedding API keys or other secrets in the app so is not subject to reverse engineering attacks. Deployment on both the server side and and in the app is straightforward. More details on Approov can be found here.

"With customers reporting increasing mobile API traffic coming from sources other than the customer's mobile app, we see direct operational cost savings as well as brand reputation protection being realized from the deployment of Approov," commented David Stewart, CEO of CriticalBlue. "We're very pleased that Gartner has recognised us and believe this recognition is due to both the business and security aspects of our solution in their assessment of Approov."

Management of API access by third party mobile apps is an emerging requirement in digital transformation as enterprises monetize their APIs. Businesses need to be able to manage API usage and access across a wide range of partnership types. Static API keys are inherently insecure and not flexible enough to achieve this goal. As the Gartner Cool Vendor report puts it:

“Enterprises combatting app fatigue and attempting to keep consumers engaged through enhanced functionality in their mobile apps are finding that the API between the mobile app and enterprises’ back-end assets has become an attractive target for ’bad actors’.”

Regarding their experience of deploying Approov, Steven Puddephatt, Business Solutions & Design, Racing Post commented "After implementing Approov to secure our open API platform it gave us visibility of cloned applications and bogus data miners. Our initial figures show that 15-20% of the monthly unique devices are not ours, equating to a significant volume of unwanted connections."

About the Gartner Report

The Gartner report "Cool Vendors in Mobile App Development, 2017" by analysts Adrian Leow, Van L Baker, Richard Marshall, Manjunath Bhat (document ID G00325959) was published on May 12th, 2017.

The Gartner Cool Vendor Logo is a trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc., and/or its affiliates, and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organisation and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.