How to Prepare for Third-party Apps: A-to-Z Guide for Beginners!

In this article, I am going to tell you about the importance of third-party application patch management. So if you want to know about it, then keep reading this article. Because I am going to give you complete information about it, so let’s start.

Organizations rely on hundreds of third-party apps to enable employees to connect to teams and access information vital to carry out jobs. According to recent findings, on average, a company with 10,000 SaaS users using M365 has 2,033 apps connected to its suite of applications. Companies of that size using Google Workspace have more than three times the amount, averaging 6,710 connected applications. Smartphones and other mobile devices support third-party applications. These applications are available on online marketplaces—Apple App Store, Google Play Store, or Windows App Store—from which users can download and install them.

Although there are clear advantages in allowing users and devices to access a broad range of such applications, they can pose risks to devices and company data. This article should help IT admins outline organizational policies for using third-party applications, including patch management, to minimize risks without affecting employee experience.

Today’s article focuses on the same,i.e, “How to Prepare for Third-party Apps” The articles entail each bit of information necessary for you to know.

Let’s get started!✨

Table of Contents

Why Secure Third-Party Apps?

Third-party apps installed on devices can read and modify user data on the device. They also have access to company data. So, app stores require apps created by third parties (companies or developers) to undergo a verification process to check for compliance with data security policies.

Occasionally, apps from third-party sources are not filtered through official channels and turn out to be malicious and bring associated privacy threats. The risk of the vulnerability being exploited is considered low, but the cost to fix it later can be very high. The following are potential dangers third-party apps can create for devices and users:

Access to confidential data – Apps can access sensitive business information and potentially misuse it.
Suspicious activity – Apps contain an ad library that can be a potential source for downloading harmful codes from the web. These codes can launch a ‘root exploit’ to access devices.
System instability – Apps that aren’t optimized can cause system instability and eat into the battery life.

Sideloading apps is another threat. Sideloading apps is when users install apps that aren’t from an official source, such as Microsoft, Google, or Apple. The main reason that users sideload apps is that official channels do not offer software that users need to complete a task. Since these apps aren’t verified, they are a notable security risk.

How to Prepare for Third-party Apps

Organizations naturally need to take productivity benefits from third-party applications, so IT admins need the tools and policies that balance business needs with information risks.

1. Create Allow Lists / Deny Lists

Denylisting is where IT makes a list of apps that are not safe to be used, and once the policy is applied, employees can’t use these apps on their devices. Application Allowlisting is a security capability that reduces security attacks by allowing only trusted files, applications, and processes to run.

IT companies can make a list of safe apps and enforce it on devices with mobile application management (MAM) solutions. MAM solutions allow IT staff to publish, push, configure, secure, monitor, and update mobile apps for users. Certain application management solutions allow IT to create and maintain a third-party software update app catalog.

2. Third-party App Patching

Vulnerabilities exist in verified apps. Third-party patching is necessary to fix vulnerabilities in applications susceptible to cyberattacks. The lack of a fixed timetable for the release of patches by developers or companies makes it difficult for organizations to keep pace with software updates and patches for third-party applications.

Patch management tools help patch an organization’s most critical client operating systems and apps. Many software tool providers spend countless hours testing all patches in a controlled environment to proper patch compliance. Automated third-party patching allows companies to automatically scan devices for patches needed and automate the distribution of devices. This automation saves the grunt work of manual patching, where IT admins would spend hours applying patches on each device. Besides applying patches to fix vulnerabilities, app patching also fixes bugs to improve application functionality.

3. Split Work Apps and Personal Apps

Containerization provides a way for organizations to create containers or work profiles on employee devices. This approach is useful for organizations that have adopted a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy to allow users to access corporate data and apps from personal devices. Creating containers helps segregate personal apps and work apps, preventing personal third-party apps from accessing (and potentially compromising) sensitive work data.

Mobile device management (MDM) solutions allow IT admins complete control over apps in the work profile. IT admins use MDM to create containers, install managed apps in the containerized workspace, and restrict unmanaged third-party apps from gaining access to corporate data. Organizations can manage work apps and data while personal apps, data, and usage remain private. If data or an app in the work container is compromised, IT admins can delete all contents present in the work container remotely from their MDM dashboard.

4. Apply Zero Trust

If devices have access to a core network, third-party apps can also access the core network. They may be able to access any unprotected data on the network. Organizations should have Zero Trust access policies to make networks resilient against attacks.

Zero Trust assumes that the network has been compromised and requires users and devices to prove they have an acceptable level of risk. For example, a Zero Trust policy will allow granular access to data and functionality of an application that a specific entity requires. In a zero-trust network, all systems work on the principle of least-privileged access. This includes applications too.

Patch management tools help to keep applications up to date but cannot keep software from communicating if malware enters the system before a patch has been applied. By isolating assets in a Zero Trust network, organizations can identify an unpatched vulnerability before it exists.

Conclusion:)

Third-party apps today are easier to deploy and even easier to use in the workplace, but they can also become an easy attack surface to attack by threat actors. Therefore, managing third-party apps is an essential part of IT administration. By understanding the risks associated with third-party apps using mobile device management solutions and having policies for using third-party applications in the workplace, IT admins can ensure that third-party apps are deployed safely and effectively in their organization.

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