This tax industry heavyweight relies on BiTE to build apps that solve seemingly impossible problems, keep pace with rapidly evolving tax codes, and safeguard the security of millions of users.

BiTE Stops Security Problems Before They Start for H&R Block

The goal of BlockLive was to bring the entire H&R Block experience – from meetings with your tax advisor to signing and submitting documentation – to iPhone, iPad and Android apps. That kind of personalized interaction is a delight for customers and a distinct competitive edge H&R Block has over its competitors such as TurboTax.

“BiTE is a premier iPad development company. Year after year, their talented team delivered stellar work under extremely tight deadlines. I credit BiTE in helping us embrace mobile and stay at the top of the market.”

Derek Swords
Director Of Product Development

Two-Way Security

We built network components to interact with H&R Block servers and clients to deliver real-time, two-way voice and video chat over a secure network session. This enabled customers to securely discuss financial details, transfer sensitive documents and send payments without the risk of interception.

RTP/RTSP to RTMPS

After building the prototype using RTP/RTSP, our client discovered that their servers only handled unencrypted RTP. Personal data protection and security are absolutely paramount at BiTE so we knew we could not keep the original prototype. So, we went back to the beginning. We dismantled the RTP/RTSP prototype and refactored the entire code base using RTMPS.

Preventative Measures

Once we had a secure prototype, we moved to develop version 1.0. But midway through development, we noticed one of H&R Block’s vendor’s libraries made use of GPL code without alerting our client. If Block would have deployed their app with GPL code, they would have been forced to release their entire code base to the public domain, giving anyone full view of how the server worked. This would have been catastrophic for Block, their brand and their customers.

We seek, find and solve problems before they cost time and money to our clients. This is why we only hire the top 10% of iOS, Android and back-end developers, why all resources are always in the US or Canada and why our developers are always fully dedicated to a client project from kick-off until launch.

At BiTE, we go beyond excellence in coding. We continually work to protect our clients from vendor mistakes and work closely with internal IT departments to ensure compatibility, compliance, and security from front to back-end. The result was a fully secure mode of communication between H&R Block and their clients, accomplished without deviating even a day from our target release date.