Software security has become a crucial aspect of protecting businesses and users from potential cyber-attacks. Blueberry's approach includes software vulnerability testing, code reviews, and cutting-edge security tools to mitigate risks and meet industry standards. We work closely with clients to deliver bespoke software solutions that protect businesses from potential cyber-attacks.
We live in a complex threat environment of malware, spyware, disgruntled employees and aggressive international hackers. Consequently, the threat of security breaches in software has become one of the most troubling aspects about technology – in particular the theft of intellectual property or personal data in an increasingly interconnected world.
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Partner, PKF Cooper Parry
We are all exposed to the constant danger of digital data theft—an issue that has only intensified as our lives and businesses become increasingly connected. Attackers no longer rely solely on operating system flaws, stolen passwords, or cloned magnetic stripe cards (which are largely obsolete in most developed regions). Today’s major threats include AI-powered phishing with deepfake voices and videos, supply chain compromises, ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS), and the looming risk of quantum computing undermining traditional encryption methods. These advanced tactics make breaches harder to detect and potentially far more damaging.
On the consumer side, “moving data to the web” has evolved into a preference for fintech-first solutions such as neobanks and payment apps, which many now trust more than traditional banks for sharing financial data. This shift has been supported by global regulatory changes—such as PSD3 in the EU and the 2024 U.S. Open Banking rules—that extend beyond bank-led standards to impose stricter compliance requirements on fintechs and enable real-time payment integrations.
Security and privacy remain at the heart of Open Banking. Static consent forms have given way to smart consent management, allowing customers to grant time-limited, granular permissions, often verified through biometric authentication or self-sovereign identity (SSI) wallets. Screen scraping has been largely phased out, replaced by standardized, secure OAuth 2.0 and Financial-grade API (FAPI) protocols. At the same time, AI-driven fraud detection is now a regulatory requirement in many markets, offering real-time protection against increasingly sophisticated attacks.
Despite these advances, the fundamental challenge remains: when breaches occur, organisations must ask how it happened, what they are doing to remediate it, and how to prevent it from happening again. Meeting these questions today requires more than technical safeguards—it demands a holistic approach where security and privacy work hand-in-hand, ensuring not only performance and innovation but also trust and accountability in an era moving rapidly toward Open Finance and cross-industry Open Data ecosystems.
Cyberattacks remain one of the most significant risks for organisations, but the methods have evolved. Traditional brute force password guessing, once a common tactic, is now far less effective thanks to the widespread adoption of multi-factor authentication (MFA), passwordless authentication standards like FIDO2 and passkeys, and AI-driven anomaly detection systems that automatically block suspicious login attempts. Many services also employ advanced rate-limiting and adaptive CAPTCHA systems to make large-scale brute force attacks impractical.
However, attackers have shifted focus to more sophisticated threats. Today, the biggest risks include API breaches, supply chain compromises (such as the SolarWinds-style incidents of the early 2020s), AI-driven phishing and deepfake-enabled social engineering campaigns, and Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) targeting businesses of all sizes. Additionally, cloud misconfigurations in platforms like AWS, Azure, or GCP, as well as leaks from widely used collaboration tools such as Slack and Microsoft Teams, have become common sources of exposure.
Past scandals like the Sony Pictures breach or the 2014 iCloud photo leak underscored the danger of poor security practices, but today the stakes are even higher as attackers wield more advanced tools and target the broader digital supply chain.
When breaches occur, organisations face immediate costs, regulatory scrutiny, reputational damage, and long-term erosion of customer trust. That’s why the focus has shifted toward a holistic approach that integrates security and privacy. Beyond firewalls and encryption, companies are now required in many jurisdictions to deploy AI-powered fraud detection and adopt privacy-first frameworks such as GDPR and Open Banking’s FAPI standards.
Ensuring data protection means not only defending against intrusions but also proactively identifying risks, eliminating weak links, and guaranteeing customers full control over their data.
It must be remembered that a vast amount of personal and financial information is stored in digital systems worldwide. With the common practice of reusing credentials, a single compromised account can open the door to multiple services—or even enable full-scale identity theft by piecing together leaked data from email, cloud storage, and online accounts. Collaboration platforms and SaaS tools have also become frequent targets, making strong authentication more critical than ever.
Passwords and authentication – Simple, short passwords are no longer sufficient. An “eight-character minimum” is now considered insecure. Following NIST 800-63B guidance, the current best practice in 2025 is to require at least 12 characters in a password, while moving away from mandatory complexity rules (such as forcing symbols in every password). Instead, organisations are encouraged to promote long, memorable passphrases that balance usability with security.
Protecting against brute force attacks – The risk of simple brute-force guessing has been reduced through widespread use of multi-factor authentication (MFA), which is now a standard requirement in most sectors. Older SMS-based one-time codes are being phased out in favor of more secure options such as FIDO2 and WebAuthn, which use hardware tokens, biometrics, or device-based credentials. In addition, rate-limiting systems block repeated failed login attempts, and behavioral biometrics (like typing speed and mouse movement analysis) are increasingly deployed to spot unusual or fraudulent activity.
Data protection and insight – Hashing and salting passwords remains a core safeguard to ensure that even if a database is compromised, the original credentials are not exposed. Blueberry’s solutions go further by checking new passwords against databases of known weak or breached credentials, and by flagging common, easily guessed patterns (e.g., “password123”). This proactive stance helps businesses defend against modern attack vectors while maintaining user convenience.
By combining stronger authentication, smarter monitoring, and advanced AI-driven fraud detection, today’s access control strategies provide resilience against threats ranging from credential stuffing to sophisticated social engineering, enabling businesses to protect both their systems and their customers with far greater confidence.
Operating systems and other widely used software are a prime target for hackers. A weakness discovered in widely used products is valuable because it can be used in the commission of many crimes. As a result, the more widely used a program is, the more attention it draws – not just from the hackers attempting to find its weaknesses, but also from the software industry in protecting it.
Bespoke software generally gets less attention because no one knows the source code outside of the developers themselves. However, while bespoke software often attracts less direct attention, it typically relies on popular frameworks, libraries, and cloud services that can present their own attack surfaces. For this reason, building secure custom software today requires a combination of careful design, early testing, and modern security practices:
At Blueberry, we work with clients to integrate these modern security practices from the very start of development. Our focus is on building resilient, cross-platform solutions—whether native apps or Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)—that deliver both performance and trust, ensuring businesses and their users are protected in an evolving digital landscape.
If you have a custom software development project with security requirements, please give us a call.
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