Security Practices Every Startup Should Adopt Early

Startups rarely get hacked through exotic attacks. It's usually a leaked key, an over-permissive setting or an old dependency. The good news is that most of these risks are cheap to prevent early and expensive to fix later. These are the practices we recommend to every client.

1. Keep secrets out of code

Store connection strings, API keys and signing keys in a dedicated secret manager, and let services read them at runtime with their own identities. Nothing sensitive goes into source control, configuration files or build logs, and rotating a key doesn't need a code change.

2. Make sessions revocable

A signed token that stays valid until it expires can't be taken back. Include a security stamp in each token and check it on every request, so a password change or reset signs out every other device straight away. If the check itself fails, return "try again" rather than signing everyone out.

3. Allow-list who can call your APIs

Configure CORS with an explicit list of origins per environment instead of allowing everything. A development web app should only be able to reach development APIs, and production APIs should only accept your production apps and website.

4. Separate environments completely

Development and production should have separate databases, secrets, notification credentials and logs. Test data never mixes with real customer data, and a mistake in development can't reach production users.

5. Don't reveal who has an account

Sign-in and password-reset responses should look the same whether or not an email is registered, and take the same time. Otherwise attackers can use your login form to check which emails have accounts.

6. Protect public endpoints

Contact forms, sign-up and anything that sends email or calls a paid API need rate limiting, and usually a CAPTCHA. Without them, bots can flood your inbox or run up your cloud bill overnight.

7. Keep dependencies and logs healthy

Update dependencies regularly, and keep logs useful without filling them with personal data or credentials. Retain logs for a defined period, then delete them.

Security is cheapest when it's part of the first sprint, not the last. See our cloud and DevOps services.