How a major fast-food chain secured its customer loyalty app

Protecting customer data and avoiding security breaches in a fast-growing mobile environment.

Summary

A company that programs and maintains loyalty apps for fast-food and chain restaurant brands partnered with Promon to secure its customer loyalty app for select clients. Facing potential vulnerabilities like data interception and weak authentication in the face of credential stuffing attacks, the company needed to protect customer data and avoid potential breaches that could damage its reputation.

Company profile

Fast-food and chain restaurants operate hundreds of locations worldwide and often rely on a mobile app for loyalty programs. With millions of users enrolled, the app collects and stores personal customer data, making it a prime target for cybercriminals. The company that develops these applications and maintains them wanted to offer a higher level of protection against constantly evolving threats, and find specific solutions to ongoing threats.

The challenge

If online retailers sacrifice security for speed, it can leave apps exposed to cybercriminals. Attacks can result in significant business implications, loss of customer data, declining revenue or lawsuits, and ultimately loss of brand reputation. The mobile loyalty app was at risk of being exploited through reverse engineering and data interception.

Weak authentication measures also left it vulnerable to unauthorized access, threatening to expose sensitive customer information. Hackers were attempting to use credential stuffing - or use large volumes of stolen usernames and passwords from previous breaches to try and gain access to other accounts - to gain access to the loyalty apps.

Because loyalty apps contain sensitive information, it was critical to add layers of mobile application security that could be easily deployed and used to protect restaurant applications.

Promon's solution

1. App Shielding: Promon implemented app shielding to prevent reverse engineering and tampering with the app’s code.
2. End-to-End Encryption: Promon ensured all data transmissions between the app and the company’s servers were encrypted, reducing the risk of interception.
3. Credential Protection: App shielding strengthens authentication processes by preventing attackers from tampering with or bypassing security mechanisms, making it significantly harder to reverse-engineer the app and extract sensitive information like hard-coded secrets or API keys. Techniques like code obfuscation and runtime protection further safeguard against automated scripts and bots used in credential stuffing.

Results

As mobile apps become a cornerstone of customer engagement, fast-food and restaurant chains face an increasing need to secure sensitive customer data at every touchpoint. The company deployed Promon SHIELD®, the industry-leading app shielding solution designed to protect mobile applications against reverse engineering, tampering, and data interception. By implementing Promon’s end-to-end encryption and multi-factor authentication, the company successfully secured its loyalty app across devices and operating systems. With Promon SHIELD®, they strengthened their defenses, reduced the risk of unauthorized access, and safeguarded customer data from emerging threats, allowing the business to focus on providing seamless, secure customer experiences globally.