Announcing Ionic Secure Storage: Secure, reliable high-performance data access
I’m excited to announce the first release of Ionic Secure Storage, the latest from our growing suite of enterprise-ready native solutions. Ionic Secure Storage is a high-performance, secure data store that lets you encrypt, access, and manage your data locally across iOS and Android (and web, see later) with zero hassle. Build secure, reliable, high-performance apps quickly without being a mobile security expert.
If your team is building Ionic apps that need to safeguard sensitive data, ensure security compliance and adhere to regulations such as HIPAA, or would like to deliver highly performant data-driven experiences that work on and offline, then this solution is for you. With Secure Storage, you can shave off weeks or months of development time, and rest easy knowing Ionic’s team of native experts will handle long-term maintenance and stability.
Why Ionic Secure Storage?
Most interesting mobile apps need to store and manage a large volume of data on the client. Users expect apps to pick up where they left off, and work even when network connectivity is flaky. Businesses expect user data to stay secure and many have obligations and commitments to encrypt client-side data to avoid leaking sensitive user or company data.
Implementing these experiences as a developer can be challenging. Most Web APIs for storage have limitations, such as operating systems deleting data to save space, low storage capacity limits, and no encryption support. Using low-level storage APIs like SQLite can be difficult, especially when encryption is involved, and long-term maintenance and support are hard to come by.
But securing mobile apps these days is a must. After all, no company can risk the consequences: data loss, unauthorized account access, angry customers, brand damage, and more. Unfortunately, it’s easier said than done. Your team has enough to do – when are they supposed to find the time to become security and storage experts? Not to mention keeping up over time, as security best practices and operating systems or devices change often, especially in the mobile world.
Enter Ionic Secure Storage, which takes out all the challenging work of securing your apps.
Key Features and Benefits
To store, access, and manage data, Ionic Secure Storage uses SQLite, which is an industry-leading data storage engine providing full SQL query and relational data support. This is a powerful offering for data-driven apps since it provides better query performance compared to traditional file system storage and has none of the downsides of Web API storage methods. And, being SQL-based, its ACID-compliant transactions prevent data loss in the case of crashes or device shutoff. Finally, you maintain complete ownership of the data. Since it’s stored directly on the filesystem outside of the browser environment, it can be managed independently of Ionic Secure Storage, opening up data export and device/platform migration opportunities.
As data is stored, it’s encrypted at-rest on iOS and Android using 256-bit AES. When paired with Identity Vault, Ionic’s mobile biometrics solution, you can securely manage encryption keys and lock down data access using the app user’s biometrics (fingerprint scan and facial recognition).
For apps that need a single codebase running on iOS, Android, and the web, developers can integrate with Ionic Storage, a Key/Value library that provides a consistent API across platforms, though developers will need to use this API instead of writing SQL queries as there is no SQL engine available in browsers today.
All of this comes together to provide one solution for all secure storage needs.
Getting Started
Secure Storage is part of Ionic’s suite of powerful solutions that help you build, secure, and deliver enterprise-grade apps in less time. To learn more about how Secure Storage can help protect your users’ data and offer a premier high-performance, data-driven experience, check out the docs.
Curious to see it in action? Download Ionifits, a human resources app that showcases everything the Ionic App Platform has to offer. Available on iOS, Android, and the web.
