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NIST SP 800-163 REV. 1 VETTING THE SECURITY OF MOBILE APPS
This publication is available free of charge from: https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.SP.800-163r1
2 App Security Requirements
Before vetting a mobile app for security, an organization must define the security requirements
that an app must meet in order to be approved for use by the organization. In this document, we
define two types of app security requirements that organizations should develop: general and
organization-specific.
2.1 General Requirements
General app security requirements define the software and behavioral characteristics of an app
that should or should not be present in order to ensure the security of the app. These
requirements are considered “general” since they can be applied across all mobile applications
and tailored to meet the security needs and risk tolerance of an organization. General app
security requirements may be derived from a number of available standards, best practices, and
resources including those specified by NIAP, OWASP, MITRE and NIST
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2.1.1 National Information Assurance Partnership (NIAP)
The NIAP Protection Profiles (PPs) specify an implementation-independent set of security
requirements for a category of information technology (IT) products that meet specific federal
customer needs. Specifically, the NIAP PPs are intended for use in certifying products for use in
national security systems to meet a defined set of security requirements. NIAP PP certified
products are also used by federal organizations in non-national security systems. The NIAP PPs
define in detail the security objectives, requirements and assurance activities that must be met for
a product evaluation to be considered International Organization for Standardization (ISO)/
International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 15408 certified [6]. While many mobile apps
fall outside the defined scope for requiring ISO/IEC 15408 certification, security analysis of
these apps is still useful. For these apps, the NIAP recommends a set of activities and evaluations
defined in Requirements for Vetting Mobile Apps from the Protection Profile for Application
Software [7]. The requirements defined in this document are divided into two broad categories:
1) Functional Requirements—Declarations concerning the required existence or absence of
particular software behavior or attributes.
2) Assurance Requirements—Declarations concerning actions the evaluator must take or
stipulations that must be true for vetting to successfully execute.
Table 1 summarizes the NIAP functional requirements
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Additional threats and vulnerabilities can be found in Appendices A, B, and C.
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For brevity, many, but not all the functional requirements are listed in Table 1. Some are high-level descriptions of multiple
related controls. See NIAP Protection Profile for the full list [7].