AS the digital economy in the Philippines continues to thrive, the e-commerce market is estimated to reach $24 billion by 2025. A significant number of Filipino buyers are actively engaging in online shopping, highlighting the widespread adoption and reliance on digital marketplaces for shopping needs.
However, this boom also brings challenges such as scams and fraud, often driven by mobile malware, which silently compromises the consumer experience. Ensuring consumer privacy and data security has become paramount.
Jan Sysmans Mobile App Security evangelist at Appdome shares valuable insights on how Appdome’s mobile app security solutions enable e-commerce platforms to protect customer data, secure payment gateways, and comply with data protection regulations.
The Manila Times (TMT): What are the primary or the more significant threats to consumer privacy in e-commerce, and how do these threats impact users in the Philippines?
Jan Sysmans (Sysmans): I would like to use this survey, which we will be releasing when we are at Rootcon 18 Hacking Conference happening in Tagaytay City next week. I want to kind of walk through with you some of the consumer expectations on mobile app security from the 2024 survey that we’ve had; it’s an exclusive for you, and kind of go over what the key things that we learned in this survey in answer to some of your questions.
Survey highlights:
– If we look at how Filipinos engage with brands, almost three-quarters of Filipinos, almost 75 percent of Filipinos, have said that their mobile app use has increased over the last 12 months. They’re dramatically engaging with brands using mobile apps.
Seventy percent of Filipinos use between three and 10 apps on average per week, and this is something that we’ve already seen, and what just became even bigger from a trend is that e-wallet apps and payment apps are the primary apps Filipinos use, and their usage is actually almost twice as big as the global average.
More than half of Filipinos now say that they just prefer mobile apps, period. So if you think about what Filipinos are doing, they are dramatically using mobile apps to engage with brands.
– Now, what are Filipinos concerned about? This kind of answers your privacy protection question in a different way. 67 percent of Filipinos said they fear hacking — hacking their app.
Almost half of Filipinos say that they’ve already been a victim of a cyberattack or malware. Over 40 percent fear mobile fraud, and 36 percent of Filipinos have encountered social engineering scams.
And if you look at social engineering scams, they name their top social engineering concern, the top scam that they’re concerned with, that 80 percent of Filipinos fear smishing. 60 percent of Filipinos fear vishing.
– Nine out of 10 Filipinos say that security is equally or more important than features. So the message to brands is, pay attention to security.
The other thing that I thought was extremely revealing in the survey, and where the survey really provided very interesting insights into the minds of Filipinos: 87 percent of Filipinos want brands to take preemptive fraud action. They want to preemptively prevent fraud from happening. They don’t want to be compensated for fraud when it happens.
They’re saying brands should focus on trying to prevent fraud from happening rather than reimburse me after it happens. And so, not surprisingly, almost half of Filipinos say that it’s the developer’s or the brand’s job to protect them against cyberthreats, malware, fraud and privacy.
– Almost 99 percent of Filipinos say that they will seek out information about security and privacy before using an app. 76 percent will abandon a brand after a breach, and they will tell their friends to do so. 64 percent are like or very likely to stop using an app if it fails to protect them. And in fact, this number is again higher than the global average. And 77 percent of Filipinos have said that they have deleted an app and stopped using an app due to security concerns.
These numbers are very interesting and what the survey reveals here. But it’s not all negative. If a brand is willing to educate their customers on the security that they do and is willing to share with their customers that they do everything they can to protect their users against cyberthreats, against fraud, against malware, against social engineering attacks.
– And if they are effectively communicating when bad things happen, Filipinos will reward that, and they will reward that by becoming advocates with likes, hashtags, positive app reviews, or actively going out and telling their friends and family they should start using this app because this app really puts in the effort to protect me.
TMT: How does artificial intelligence (AI) play out on your defense platform?
Sysmans: Bad guys are using AI to develop threats, and so Appdome is an AI machine learning engine that, from an AI standpoint, makes it easy to build projections. It’s an AI-based engine that will allow you to build your desired security model into your mobile app so you don’t have to do any work. It allows the brand to communicate to its customers what is happening and how they can stop using it, how they can start or remove the threat, and continue using the app.
If you think about it, there are so many different attack vectors out there, so many different attacks that happen for a human to sit there and try to understand all the different components of an attack, and then tell a user, this is what is happening. The only way you can do that is with generative AI and use GenAI in the back end.
TMT: How does Appdome keep pace with the stories that the cybercriminals are always ahead of the cyber protectors?
Sysmans: The patented technology in our platform allows brands to easily see new threats that are coming. And again, this AI platform that we have has the intelligence to understand and like instantly analyze a threat, identify the elements that are made up of the threat, and then report real time in a threat intelligence dashboard, allowing people to then take action for version and upgrade their security model. Without Appdome’s AI engine, brands are blind to the threats and attacks.
Appdome is an automation platform that makes it very easy to protect mobile apps and consumers against cyberthreats, against fraud, against malware, against social engineering attacks. We are a platform that brands all around the Philippines use to automate building security into their mobile apps.
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