保护iOS到Web服务通信

Question

I am working on designing and building a web service to provide data for an iOS app (also of my design). The web service includes a MySQL database that stores valuable educational data. I have decided to make a REST API written in PHP and using JSON for sending messages to my app. My reasoning for this is REST/JSON will be easy to implement in both PHP and Objective-C without any additional frameworks. My only issue is security. I haven't written a web service before, so I have no idea to secure communication between my web service and my app. This is where I need advice. I need a way to secure communication between an iOS device and my PHP web service so I can send passwords and data securely. Does anyone have advice on a simple and effective security measure for communication? I'm familiar with the concepts of public/private keys and cryptography, but I don't know any standards for implementing security measures. Thank you for your advice.

Answer 1

HTTPS takes care of transport security for you, just as it does for regular web pages. No need to reinvent the wheel.

Obviously, you still need security at the application layer to prevent folks from hammering your servers with millions of spam requests and what not.