The best iPhone security apps

It may seem a little odd talking about security apps on iPhone and iPad, as iOS is the most secure of mobile operating systems.

New malware samples targeting Android devices account for the overwhelming majority of “in the wild” threats facing mobile users, and Apple is so confident in the security of iOS – partly courtesy of Apple’s “walled garden” approach to app development and partly the sand boxing of iOS itself – that there are simply no antivirus scanners for the iPhone or iPad in the App Store.

Of course, if your device is “jailbroken” then all bets are off, and the risk/reward balance is something any jailbreaker needs to take into account.

However, none of that means security isn’t required. Here are our top iOS apps to help keep your iPad or iPhone secure – and one you should definitely avoid.

1Password (£12.99)

To be fair, £12.99 is a big ask for an app purchase, but with 1Password you are investing in enhanced password safety for all the sites any systems you use.

That’s quite a statement, but if you’re reusing passwords across sites it only takes a breach at one of them to put all the others at risk of compromise.

That means it’s far better to use a password manager that creates truly strong, complex and unique, passwords for every service. Your password vault is then secured by a single super strong password that you should be able to remember without writing down, as it’s the only one you do have to remember.

1Password comes in Mac and Windows desktop flavours, as well as the iOS client for iPad and iPhone. It’s a local-vault rather than a cloud-synced one, but you can use the Dropbox integration if you want to sync between devices – and there are some compelling arguments as to why the double whammy of 1Password and Dropbox encryption, along with some other technical detail that you can read about at the developer site in the FAQ, makes this a safe practise. It’s not cheap, but it offers essential protection for anyone who takes their password security seriously.

Free Password Generator! (free)

This free app ties in very nicely with 1Password in that it helps create truly strong and complex passwords in a random fashion, rendering them more secure than most people are likely to come up with on their own.

The end results are very complex and tough to remember, but that’s the beauty of a password vault. There’s nothing complex about using the app though: select the password length (up to 128 characters), choose whether you want lower-case, upper-case, numerals, or special characters included and then hit the generate passwords button. It creates a list of ten random passwords; tap one and you can see both the SHA1 and MD5 hashes generated by the string. The password gets copied to the clipboard for pasting and you can email it to yourself for good measure.

Google Authenticator (free)

Sticking with the password theme for a moment longer, if you use Google for more than just searching – making use of GMail, for example – then using two-step verification for your account is highly recommended.

This app generates verification codes directly on your iPhone – there is no iPad app available – without the need for any network connection. What it doesn’t do is generate application-specific passwords and if a Google application does ask for one of these then you have to follow the prompts about signing in – this will often be the case after turning on two-step verification for the first time).

What it does do is make setting up the verification code generation process a doddle using QR codes, with support for multiple accounts and both time-based and counter-based generation.

VirusBarrier (69p)

VirusBarrier from Intego is the closest there is to an antivirus app for iOS right now. Although there is often talk about iOS malware being out there, more often it’s rogue apps that may violate privacy or email attachments with something nasty that get passed to other operating systems.

VirusBarrier serves to prevent your iOS device from acting as a conduit that unwittingly passes an infected file to your Windows or Mac computer or network.

It’s a bit of a faff, as VirusBarrier is an on-demand scanner that you have to run in order to validate any given file or email attachment on your device or a remote location such as Dropbox or FTP shares.

The scan covers everything you’d expect though, from adware to trojans, and will also repair any infected files. It prevents your iPad or iPhone from becoming a gateway for malware.

Of course, the fact that it can’t just run in the background and act like a traditional antivirus product to alert of dangers means that only the more clued up user will use it, leaving the people most likely to pass on an infection doing just that.

Smart Surfing (free)

Another way that iOS users can appear on the radar of the bad guys is through good old social engineering – and outside of the direct email phishing scams, the most common route to such attacks is the web browser.

The free Smart Surfing app from security vendor Trend Micro is actually a web browser that uses the company’s Smart Protection Network web reputation technology to detect malicious web pages and prevent the user from visiting them.

On the plus side, unlike some other solutions, Smart Surfing doesn’t apply a penalty in terms of browsing speed and does protect against most malicious content, phishing and pharming attack vectors.

On the downside, you’ll have to switch to a browser that isn’t as feature rich as Chrome or as integrated with other iOS functionality as Safari.

Norton Snap (free)

Another attack vector targets the mobile user almost exclusively, is one that I’ve covered here at PC Pro before: the giant barcode otherwise known as the QR code.

The ‘quick response’ codes are a marketing dream, designed to quickly let consumers find out more information about a product or service simply by pointing a smartphone at the barcode. As such they appear in magazines, newspapers, on websites, in shop windows and even the back of buses.

QR codes have also come to the attention of cybercriminals, who exploit the fact that people implicitly trust that the QR code is taking them where they think. In fact, you could just as easily be taken to a rogue site designed to harvest your personal and financial information. Using the aforementioned Smart Surfing browser app would be one way to stop this dead, but better yet why not use the app that scans the QR code in the first place?

Enter Norton with the rather clever Snap app. It checks the QR code and looks for the final destination rather than just the shortened URL hop, using the Norton Safe Web database, blocking sites that are malicious.

If you’re not sure. you can hit a button and get taken to the full Safe Web site for more information, including the full nature of the threats detected.

Chrome (free)

After recommending a web browser app built around the notion of security, it may seem a bit of a stretch to include an all purpose client such as Chrome from Google.

However, the desktop version of the browser has an ‘incognito’ option for anonymous browsing which enables stealth browsing that deletes all cookies after closing the windows, and doesn’t record any activity in browsing or download history – in essence it erases your local digital footprints upon exit. It can’t prevent the sites you visit from tracking you, of course.

Incognito is present in the iOS version of the browser, but there is a caveat: due to iOS limitations, sites can access their data in HTML5 local stores (client-side caching) via both regular or incognito sessions. That said, the Chrome browser app will still keep your browsing history and cookies separate from regular tabs and they are still cleared when closed for more private browsing.

Pic Lock 2 (69p)

If you use your iPhone camera all the time, then chances are you have quite a few photos stored upon your device as well as in iCloud. While that means they’re always with you, they are also always with anyone else who gets access to your phone.

For these there is Pic Lock 2, or Pic Lock 2 – Dot Lock Photo Protection to give it the full name treatment. It hides your photos in a “secret” store which requires passcode entry to access.

The store isn’t really secret as despite the clever use of a plain black textile icon that means it disappears from home screen view when dropped into a folder, if you expand the folder the icon has a label underneath in bright white lettering.

Still, you can lock this photo store with a passcode or a ‘dot pattern’ if you prefer, which prevents prying eyes from seeing your pics. It takes a bit of fiddling to set up, with photos having to be moved from your normal albums to the Pic Lock ones, but it’s worth it for the additional privacy provided.

ContactsPro (£1.49)

Speaking of hiding things, the very same arguments that apply to photos equally apply to your contacts data. ContactsPro lets you hide your contacts within a protected area that requires a passcode to access.

You can create multiple protected groups, easily import your existing contacts, add photo albums to any contact – a nice alternative way to conceal those photos you don’t want others to see – and back your data up to an FTP server. It’s a very nice little app, but if you don’t fancy splashing £1.49 on it then there’s a try before you buy free option that comes limited to three protected contacts and ten protected photos.

Fingerprint Scanners

And finally, this is a warning not get fooled by the myriad biometric apps out there. While it would be nice to secure your iPhone with your fingerprints, or your iPad with your eyeball, the truth of the matter is that there are no such apps available that will bring biometric security to your hardware.

Take the ‘Biometric Fingerprint Security Pro’ app, for example, which does at least state that “the fingerprint scanner feature is only for entertainment purposes, it does not perform true fingerprint scanning technology”.

Actually it just shows what looks like a scanner bar scanning a fingerprint, but does nothing. It does come with a motion alarm that sounds a loud noise if your iPhone is moved once armed. And that’s a lot more than most of these apps, many of which are very misleading indeed.

Take the ‘Fingerprint Scanner – Lock Screen Replacement’ app which has a description of “Introducing the fingerprint scanner security” and goes on to include fingerprint scanning in the features list. The only place it is mentioned that this does not work is in the numerous customer reviews complaining about the fact. Oddly, there are very few ‘biometric’ apps which are free. You have been warned…