Over the past decade, organizations have redefined their security strategies around a single principle: never trust, always verify. The Zero Trust model has become the gold standard for securing users, networks, and systems, with a projected growth from $36.5 billion in 2024 to $78.7 billion by 2029.
But there's a critical blind spot:
Despite the rise of Zero Trust, most enterprises overlook one of today’s most exploited threat vectors: consumer-facing mobile applications.
Mobile apps are now central to business operations—powering transactions, customer interactions, and access to sensitive data. Yet, unlike traditional endpoints, they operate in uncontrolled, often untrusted environments. That makes them prime targets for sophisticated attacks.
In 2024 alone, over 33 million mobile cyberattacks were recorded globally, highlighting the scale and urgency of the threat. And these aren’t just technical issues—they’re business risks that directly impact customer trust, compliance, and revenue.
This isn’t just a technical problem. It’s a business liability.
Mobile apps are directly tied to customer trust, regulatory compliance, and revenue performance. Without applying Zero Trust principles at the app layer—especially during runtime—organizations leave themselves exposed.
This white paper presents a strategic roadmap for closing the mobile security gap by extending Zero Trust into the app runtime layer. It covers:
If mobile is where your customers are, it must also be where your Zero Trust strategy leads. The time to act is now—before your most critical channel becomes your weakest link.
"According to the State of Zero Trust Security Report 2023, 80% of organizations increased their Zero Trust budgets over the past year—despite ongoing economic pressures—highlighting the growing strategic importance of Zero Trust initiatives."
Today, mobile is not just a channel—it’s the business. Over 70% of digital interactions now occur via mobile applications, and they directly impact brand experience, customer trust, and revenue streams.
Yet, despite the strategic role mobile apps play, most enterprises still approach their security with outdated assumptions, focusing only on pre-deployment checks while leaving the runtime environment exposed.
The consequence? In 2023, Kaspersky recorded over 33.3 million cyberattacks targeting mobile devices, including sophisticated runtime manipulations and post-install threats. Apps that appear clean during app store reviews can evolve into malicious tools via silent updates, leveraging dynamic code loading, privilege escalation, and reverse engineering techniques that evade static defenses.
For the board, this isn’t a theoretical issue—it’s a material risk. According to Experian’s 2024 Global Identity and Fraud Report, fraud driven by advanced social engineering, AI misuse, and mobile compromise is rising globally, with direct impact on revenue, compliance posture, and customer loyalty.
When mobile becomes the entry point for fraud or data exfiltration, the brand—not just the breach—is under attack. One breach through a manipulated mobile session can result in:
CISOs who frame mobile runtime protection as a strategic trust asset—not a compliance checkbox—are gaining faster executive alignment.
In short: If your mobile apps are not protected at runtime, you’re not protecting your business. Embedding Zero Trust principles into the mobile runtime is becoming a strategic imperative.
Read more: Making the business case for mobile app security ROI: A guide for IT leaders
Zero Trust comes down to one core principle: never assume trust—always verify it. Yet in many organizations, mobile apps remain dangerously under-verified.
While networks and users are subject to rigorous authentication and monitoring, mobile applications often operate with implicit trust. Once installed, they’re assumed to behave as expected—despite being exposed to rooting, reverse engineering, malicious updates, and insecure API access.
This gap creates a major exposure point at the edge of digital engagement.
Traditional defenses focus on what an app looks like when it's downloaded. But today’s attackers play a longer game. They manipulate apps after installation, when it’s too late for static analysis to help.
Modern threats include:
Runtime manipulation and post-installation attacks are rising sharply, with a 50% increase in mobile Trojan detections and widespread use of dynamic code loading to bypass static defences.
Think of a mobile app like a secure airport terminal. Checking a passport at entry isn’t enough—you need ongoing surveillance, restricted access zones, and behavior monitoring to maintain security throughout the traveller’s journey.
To bring Zero Trust into the mobile app layer, organizations must implement controls that continuously:
"Without these controls, mobile apps become the weakest link—exposed to fraud, malware, and unauthorized data access."
By embedding Zero Trust at the mobile runtime level, organizations can close this critical blind spot—turning mobile apps from untrusted gateways into defensible, verifiable assets.
Enterprise leaders are increasingly turning to trusted cybersecurity frameworks to guide Zero Trust adoption. While these models are not mobile-specific, their principles are highly adaptable to mobile applications—especially at runtime, where real-world threats often surface. Aligning with these frameworks ensures consistency, regulatory compliance, and a strong security baseline.
NIST’s Zero Trust Architecture publication provides foundational principles for access decisions based on real-time context. While not tailored to mobile, its architecture-agnostic model translates well to app environments:
While the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency's (CISA) model doesn’t explicitly focus on mobile, its five pillars—Identity, Devices, Networks, Applications & Workloads, and Data—map logically to the mobile threat surface:
OWASP’s Mobile App Security Verification Standard (MASVS) offers both design-time and runtime guidance. Alignment with MASVS means:
Read more: What is the OWASP MASVS?
To help security teams operationalize these concepts, MASVS categories can be mapped directly to Zero Trust functions:
These controls embed Zero Trust directly into the mobile runtime—where traditional perimeter defences fall short.
Organizations looking to implement threat-informed defence for mobile can also reference the MITRE ATT&CK Mobile Matrix, which documents real-world attack behaviours—complementing prescriptive frameworks like OWASP MASVS. The MITRE ATT&CK helps:
The thread across these frameworks is clear: continuous evaluation, dynamic enforcement, and architectural resilience. Yet many mobile apps today remain static and blind to runtime threats.
To bring Zero Trust to mobile:
These frameworks aren’t just reference material. They provide the strategic scaffolding for protecting mobile apps that actively defend themselves—in line with Zero Trust principles that prioritize verification over assumption.
Several organizations in finance, healthcare, and digital services have adopted mobile runtime protection platforms to extend Zero Trust into their mobile applications.
Rather than rely solely on perimeter defences or pre-deployment scans, these leaders are shifting security decisions into the application layer.
By implementing runtime protection strategies, they:
These organizations are moving from reactive security to proactive enforcement, aligning mobile risk mitigation with business goals like regulatory compliance, fraud reduction, and user experience continuity.
They’ve recognized that securing mobile runtime environments requires deep, specialized capabilities—beyond what traditional tools or internal teams alone can deliver. To do it effectively, they’ve engaged with partners who understand how to operationalize Zero Trust principles within the mobile app itself. As a result, they are not just adopting frameworks—they're operationalizing them at runtime, on the user’s device. These efforts are already paying dividends: leaders report stronger compliance readiness, and accelerated time-to-market for secure app releases—demonstrating measurable ROI from their Zero Trust investments in mobile apps.
"In 2024, the average cost of a data breach rose to $4.88M. Financial firms were especially impacted, averaging $5.90M per breach. With millions of mobile devices compromised annually and mobile apps now at the center of digital engagement, the ROI of proactive protection is no longer theoretical—it’s imperative."
Zero Trust can’t stop at the network. It must extend all the way to the mobile runtime—where users interact, data flows, and critical business value is created.
As mobile threats grow more advanced, and app experiences become the primary channel for customer and partner engagement, traditional assumptions about trust boundaries no longer apply. Treating mobile as a second-class citizen in your Zero Trust strategy leaves your most exposed surfaces—apps running in untrusted environments—vulnerable to fraud, tampering, and compliance risk.