How to implement secure storage for sensitive data in iOS?

like user credentials and payment information

Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash

iOS has always placed great emphasis on user privacy and security, making it a priority for developers to ensure that sensitive information such as user credentials and payment information is stored securely. In this article, we will explore two popular libraries for securing sensitive data in iOS — CryptoSwift and KeychainAccess, and also recommend the use of biometric authentication for an added layer of security.

CryptoSwift is a library for iOS and macOS that provides cryptographic functionality, including data encryption and decryption. To use CryptoSwift, we need to first install the library using the CocoaPods package manager.

Here is an example of how to encrypt data using AES 256 encryption with CryptoSwift:

import CryptoSwift

let plainText = "secret data"
let key = "secretkey12345678"
let iv = "randomiv123456"

do {
    let aes = try AES(key: key, blockMode: CBC(iv: iv), padding: .pkcs7)
    let ciphertext = try aes.encrypt(Array(plainText.utf8))
    print(ciphertext.toHexString())
} catch {
    print(error)
}

The code above uses AES 256 encryption with CBC block mode and PKCS7 padding to encrypt the plain text. The encryption key and initialization vector…