Whether this content is a few bytes of data, feature updates, game scores, account information or video streams, it needs to be protected — no matter how or where it travels, rests, or is stored. Failing to protect content and communications with users can result in government penalties, fraud, and intellectual property theft — not to mention loss of customer trust, brand damage, and stolen revenue. Threat actors will exploit any and all app weaknesses in order to game fame, notoriety, government secrets or even just for the lolz.

Encrypting information throughout its lifecycle — in transit, at rest, and "in app" — is an important part of keeping sensitive data out of the wrong hands. Significant effort has been applied to securing data in transit, from secure transport layers to encrypting data from the source. The weak link in this chain is the endpoint: the app. The vulnerability of apps at endpoints, whether in mobile or desktop apps, had led to the growth of "Man-at-the-end" or MATE attacks.

Apps utilizing encrypted content use keys to decrypt incoming traffic and encrypt outgoing traffic — operations managed by functions inside the code of the application. If an app’s code is reverse engineered, the keys used to encrypt/decrypt content can be discovered and provide threat actors what they need to decipher encrypted information. Data resident in the app can be compromised along with all communications between the app and back office systems.