A Complete Guide to Implementing Secure Storage in Xamarin Essentials

Digitalization has made our lives more convenient than ever. But it also has downsides, like hackers can access confidential information easily from vulnerable applications. Therefore, it is crucial to secure your sensitive data to prevent 

If you have a Xamarin-build application, you can leverage Secure Storage for data protection. It is a powerful solution to secure your Xamarin mobile app.  A reliable company that offers Xamarin mobile app development services in Albania can help you secure your private details on the app. Meanwhile, you can go through the tutorial on implementing Secure Storage to save data such as passwords. Without wasting a minute, let us begin!

• How to implement Secure Storage in your Xamarin app?

1. 1. Preferences – The first step is to Preferences, which save non-sensitive information. They help in improving the user experience. For example, you can store your email credentials to prevent login again and again. Remember, Preferences are suitable to add non-sensitive values.
   2. iOS and Android settings – Follow these steps for the iOS platform setting. If you are using a simulator, then only you need this configuration.
      • • • • Firstly, enable the Keychain entitlement. After this, include a keychain access group to the bundle identifier.
            • Enable the Keychain in your Entitlement.plist.
            • Now, go to the Bundle iOS Signing and click project properties. It is time to add custom Entitlements to Entitlement.plist.

      When setting platform on Android, you have two options, such as:

      • • Enabling or disabling backup – For disabling the backup of your application, choose AndroidManifest.xml and set android:allowBackup to false.
        • Selective backup – On the other hand, you can choose the selective backup option. In this, you will configure Automatic Backup for disabling backup of particular content.

       

   3. Set Secure Storage – Secure Storage is a class that allows Xamarin developers to store simple value/key pairs. Therefore, you need to establish some value. It requires using Secure Storage, along with the SetSync method. In this, your developer will store encrypted values for a specific key. However, they should consider the following parameters.
      
      • Key-value – It provides the value that helps save the pre-registered key.
      • Key-name – With this, you get the name that use to identify the data.

      Use the following code for setting Secure Storage:

      await SecureStorage.SetAsync("oauth_token", "secret-oauth-token-value");

   4. Retrieve Secure Storage values – The next step is getting values from Secure Storage. For this, you should use the GetAsync method. It requires the following parameters:
      • Key-name – It helps you get the name of the key that you will use to retrieve the value.

      Note:* In the absence of value with the key, it will go back null.

   5. Remove Secure Store key (specific or all) – If you want to remove a particular key, just indicate the name of the key. Run this command: 

SecureStorage.Remove("oauth_token");
On the contrary, use this command to remove all keys:SecureStorage.RemoveAll();

In closing

Congratulations! Your Secure Storage is ready to use. You can start storing your data like tokens, passwords, and other sensitive information. Remember, online scammers, are more intelligent than ever. They can breach any given website or web app. Hence, it is advisable to hire the best Xamarin mobile app development services in Albania to overcome any security challenge. 

If you are searching for a reliable company that offers Xamarin mobile app development services in Albania, contact DigiDuck.