A 15-Point Security Checklist That Startups Often Ignore

Security is the thing every startup founder knows matters but nobody wants to spend time on. You're racing to ship features, close customers, and stay alive. Security feels like friction. So you postpone it, telling yourself you'll "add security later."

The problem is that there is no "adding security later." Security isn't a feature you bolt on. It's a foundation you build on. Every month you wait makes it exponentially more expensive and complex to retrofit.

The numbers back this up. According to IBM's 2024 Cost of a Data Breach Report, the global average cost of a data breach reached $4.88 million, up 10% from the prior year. For companies with fewer than 500 employees, the average is around $2.98 million. That's enough to kill most startups outright. And attackers aren't just going after big targets. 43% of all cyberattacks in 2023 targeted small businesses, according to Verizon's Data Breach Investigations Report. Automated tools don't care how small you are.

The 15-Point Security Checklist

Here's what you need to implement before you have any real users on your platform.

Authentication & Access Control

1. Authentication: Know Your Options and Their Tradeoffs

Authentication is the most important security decision you'll make early on, and it's worth understanding the landscape before you commit. There are three broad approaches, each with real tradeoffs.

Option A: Full-Service Auth Platforms

Providers like Supabase Auth, Clerk, or Auth0 handle everything: login, MFA, session management, user dashboards, and role management. You write very little auth code. This is the fastest path to a working login system, and it's fine for prototypes and early MVPs.

The catch is that you're deeply coupled to their platform. Your session model is theirs. Your user model is theirs. If you later need to run a separate API service, support a mobile app with different session requirements, or do anything the provider didn't anticipate, you'll hit walls. Migrating off a full-service auth provider mid-growth is painful and expensive. You're also paying per-user at scale.

Option B: OAuth 2.0 via NextAuth (Auth.js)

NextAuth wraps OAuth providers (Google, GitHub, Microsoft) and manages sessions within Next.js. It's more flexible than a full-service platform, gives you direct control over your user records, and has no per-user cost.

But it's tightly coupled to Next.js. If your backend grows beyond a single Next.js app, if you add a NestJS API, a mobile app, or any service that needs to verify auth independently, NextAuth's session model doesn't follow you. You'll end up bolting on your own JWT layer anyway. This makes it a solid choice for simpler applications, but be prepared to replace it as you scale.

Option C: Roll Your Own Sessions, Delegate Login to OAuth 2.0 (Recommended)

This is the approach we recommend for any startup that plans to grow. Let Google, Microsoft, or GitHub handle the login flow and MFA. They spend billions securing credential storage and authentication. You don't need to compete with that.

What you do handle in-house is everything after login: JWT issuance and validation, session management (short-lived access tokens, longer-lived refresh tokens), CSRF token rotation, XSS prevention via HTTP-only cookies, and authorization logic.

This gives you full control over your session architecture from day one. When you add a mobile app, a separate API, or microservices, your auth layer already supports it. You're not locked into any vendor's session model, and the most dangerous part of auth (storing and verifying credentials) is handled by companies that do it better than you ever will.

// Example: After OAuth 2.0 callback, issue your own tokens
import { sign, verify } from "jsonwebtoken";
 
// Short-lived access token (15 min)
const accessToken = sign(
  { userId: user.id, role: user.role },
  process.env.JWT_SECRET ?? "",
  { expiresIn: "15m", issuer: "your-app", audience: "your-api" },
);
 
// Longer-lived refresh token (7 days), stored in DB for revocation
const refreshToken = sign(
  { userId: user.id, tokenVersion: user.tokenVersion },
  process.env.REFRESH_SECRET ?? "",
  { expiresIn: "7d" },
);
 
// Set as HTTP-only cookies (not accessible via JavaScript = XSS resistant)
res.cookie("access_token", accessToken, {
  httpOnly: true,
  secure: true,
  sameSite: "strict",
  maxAge: 15 * 60 * 1000,
});

2. Strong Password Policies (If You Must Self-Host Auth)

If you have a specific reason to manage credentials yourself, such as compliance requirements, offline access, or cost at scale, then at minimum:

• Enforce 12+ character passwords
• Use a strength estimator like zxcvbn instead of simple regex rules. Users will satisfy [A-Z][a-z][0-9][!@#$] with Password1! every time
• Hash with bcrypt or argon2, never SHA-256 or MD5
• Implement account lockout after repeated failed attempts
• Rotate service account credentials on a schedule

But seriously, just use OAuth 2.0 for login and skip this entire category of problems.

3. JWT Token Security: Bearer Tokens vs. HTTP-Only Cookies

Most tutorials show JWTs stored in localStorage and sent as Authorization: Bearer <token> headers. This works, but it's vulnerable to XSS attacks. Any malicious script running on your page can read localStorage and exfiltrate tokens.

The more secure approach for web applications is HTTP-only cookies. The browser sends them automatically, and JavaScript cannot access them, which eliminates the most common token theft vector. Combined with SameSite: strict and Secure flags, this is significantly harder to exploit.

// WEB: HTTP-only cookie (preferred for browser clients)
res.cookie("access_token", token, {
  httpOnly: true, // JavaScript can't read it
  secure: true, // HTTPS only
  sameSite: "strict", // No cross-site requests
  maxAge: 15 * 60 * 1000,
});
 
// MOBILE: Bearer token (necessary for native apps)
// Mobile apps don't have cookie jars in the same way,
// so you'll need a /token endpoint that returns JWTs directly.
// Store them in the platform's secure storage:
// iOS: Keychain
// Android: EncryptedSharedPreferences

The reality is that when you ship a mobile app, you'll need to support bearer tokens anyway. Native apps don't share browser cookie jars. The practical approach is to support both: HTTP-only cookies for your web client, and a token endpoint for mobile clients that returns JWTs directly. Your API validates both, checking cookies first, then falling back to the Authorization header.

This is one reason Option C from the auth section matters. If you've built your own session layer, adding a second token delivery mechanism is straightforward. If you're locked into NextAuth's cookie-based sessions, you're in for a rewrite.

Data Protection

4. Encryption: What SSL Handles and What It Doesn't

"End-to-end encryption" gets thrown around a lot, but for most SaaS applications, TLS/SSL already handles encryption in transit. If your app is served over HTTPS (and it should be, always), data between the user's browser and your server is encrypted. You don't need to add a separate encryption layer on top of that for transit.

Where you do need to think about encryption is data at rest, meaning what's stored in your database. Most cloud database providers (RDS, PlanetScale, Supabase) encrypt at rest by default using AES-256. If you're self-hosting, make sure disk encryption is enabled (LUKS on Linux, or your hosting provider's equivalent).

The next level is field-level encryption for particularly sensitive data: API keys, payment tokens, SSNs, or anything subject to specific compliance requirements. Encrypt these at the application layer before they hit the database, so even a database breach doesn't expose plaintext values.

import { createCipheriv, createDecipheriv, randomBytes } from "crypto";
 
const ALGORITHM = "aes-256-gcm";
const KEY = Buffer.from(process.env.ENCRYPTION_KEY ?? "", "hex"); // 32 bytes
 
export function encrypt(plaintext: string): string {
  const iv = randomBytes(16);
  const cipher = createCipheriv(ALGORITHM, KEY, iv);
  const encrypted = Buffer.concat([
    cipher.update(plaintext, "utf8"),
    cipher.final(),
  ]);
  const tag = cipher.getAuthTag();
  // Store IV + auth tag + ciphertext together
  return `${iv.toString("hex")}:${tag.toString("hex")}:${encrypted.toString("hex")}`;
}
 
export function decrypt(payload: string): string {
  const [ivHex, tagHex, encryptedHex] = payload.split(":");
  const decipher = createDecipheriv(
    ALGORITHM,
    KEY,
    Buffer.from(ivHex ?? "", "hex"),
  );
  decipher.setAuthTag(Buffer.from(tagHex ?? "", "hex"));
  return (
    decipher.update(Buffer.from(encryptedHex ?? "", "hex")) +
    decipher.final("utf8")
  );
}

To summarize: TLS handles transit. Your database provider likely handles at-rest encryption for the full disk. You handle field-level encryption for sensitive fields in your application code. Don't over-engineer this, but don't ignore it either.

5. Database Security: Use an ORM

The single most common vulnerability in web applications is SQL injection. An ORM like Prisma, Drizzle, or SQLAlchemy eliminates entire categories of injection attacks because queries are parameterized by default. You never concatenate user input into a raw SQL string.

// BAD: SQL injection waiting to happen
const user = await db.query(`SELECT * FROM users WHERE email = '${email}'`);
 
// GOOD: Prisma parameterizes automatically
const user = await prisma.user.findUnique({ where: { email } });

Beyond injection prevention, ORMs give you a schema layer that prevents accidental data leaks. Without one, it's easy to write a query that returns every column in a table, including fields you never intended to expose to the client. With Prisma's select or Drizzle's column picking, you explicitly declare what comes back.

ORMs also make database migrations predictable and version-controlled. Instead of running ad-hoc ALTER TABLE statements in production, you have a migration history that can be reviewed, rolled back, and tested in CI.

One more thing: never use root database credentials in your application. Create a limited-privilege user that can only do what your app actually needs.

CREATE USER 'app_user'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'strong_password';
GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE ON app_db.* TO 'app_user'@'%';
-- No DROP, DELETE, or ALTER privileges

If your app doesn't need to delete rows, don't grant DELETE. If it doesn't need to modify schema, don't grant ALTER. The principle of least privilege applies to database access just as much as it does to user permissions.

6. API Security: Rate Limiting, Validation, and Defense in Depth

API security has multiple layers, and they serve different purposes.

Cloudflare-Level Rate Limiting (Edge/Network Layer)

If you're using Cloudflare, AWS WAF, or a similar edge provider, you can set broad rate limits that apply before requests even reach your server. This is your first line of defense against DDoS attacks, brute-force login attempts, and automated scraping. Think of this as protecting your infrastructure from being overwhelmed.

Typical edge rules might be: 1000 requests per minute per IP globally, with tighter limits on specific paths like /api/auth/login.

Application-Level Rate Limiting

Edge rate limiting doesn't know your business logic. Your application needs its own rate limits, and different endpoints need different thresholds.

A search endpoint might allow 30 requests per minute. A login endpoint should allow maybe 5 attempts per 15 minutes per account. A password reset endpoint might be even stricter. An admin API for bulk operations might have a generous limit but require elevated permissions.

// Example using a simple in-memory rate limiter (use Redis in production)
import rateLimit from "express-rate-limit";
 
// General API: 100 requests per 15 minutes
const generalLimiter = rateLimit({
  windowMs: 15 * 60 * 1000,
  max: 100,
  standardHeaders: true,
});
 
// Auth endpoints: 5 attempts per 15 minutes
const authLimiter = rateLimit({
  windowMs: 15 * 60 * 1000,
  max: 5,
  message: "Too many login attempts, please try again later",
});
 
app.use("/api/", generalLimiter);
app.use("/api/auth/", authLimiter);

Input Validation and Sanitization

Validate every input at the API boundary. Use a schema validation library like Zod (TypeScript), Joi, or class-validator (NestJS). Reject malformed requests before they reach your business logic.

import { z } from "zod";
 
const CreateUserSchema = z.object({
  email: z.string().email().max(255),
  name: z.string().min(1).max(100),
  role: z.enum(["user", "admin"]).default("user"),
});
 
// In your route handler
const result = CreateUserSchema.safeParse(req.body);
if (!result.success) {
  return res.status(400).json({ errors: result.error.flatten() });
}

API Versioning

Version your API from day one (/api/v1/). When you need to ship security patches that change response shapes or require new fields, you can do so in a new version without breaking existing clients.

Infrastructure Security

7. Server and Database Placement

There are two schools of thought here, and the right answer depends on your stage and budget.

Same server as your app. Your database sits on the same Linux box as your application. The connection is localhost, which means no network exposure, no TLS overhead for database connections, and no extra hosting costs. The downside is that you can't scale your app and database independently. When you need a second app server, you'll need to migrate the database.

Managed cloud database (RDS, PlanetScale, Supabase). Your database runs on a separate managed service with automatic backups, replication, and independent scaling. The downside is cost (managed Postgres starts around $15-25/month and climbs fast) and a network connection you need to secure.

If you go the cloud route, force SSL on database connections:

# Force SSL in your connection string
postgresql://user:pass@db-host:5432/mydb?sslmode=require

Cloud providers solve the network exposure problem with VPCs (Virtual Private Clouds on AWS), VNets (Azure), or their GCP equivalent. Your app and database communicate over an internal network that's never exposed to the public internet. This is the enterprise-grade answer, but the costs add up: NAT gateways, data transfer fees, and load balancers can quietly run $50-100/month before you've served a single user.

If you self-host, harden the box. This is non-negotiable:

Disable password-based SSH. Use key-based authentication only. This single change eliminates the most common attack vector against Linux servers.

# /etc/ssh/sshd_config
PasswordAuthentication no
PermitRootLogin no
PubkeyAuthentication yes
AllowUsers deploy            # Only allow specific users
Port 2222                    # Change default SSH port (reduces noise, not a security measure on its own)

Set up a firewall. Use ufw or iptables to allow only the ports you need. For a typical web server, that's 80 (HTTP), 443 (HTTPS), and your SSH port.

ufw default deny incoming
ufw default allow outgoing
ufw allow 443/tcp
ufw allow 80/tcp
ufw allow 2222/tcp   # Your SSH port
ufw enable

Install fail2ban. It monitors log files and bans IPs that show repeated failed login attempts. The default configuration handles SSH brute force, and you can add jails for your application's auth endpoints.

apt install fail2ban
systemctl enable fail2ban

Keep the system updated. Enable unattended security updates. This is one of the highest-value, lowest-effort security measures available.

apt install unattended-upgrades
dpkg-reconfigure -plow unattended-upgrades

Admin access for teams. If multiple people need server access, give each person their own user account with their own SSH key. Never share a single root or deploy key. Use sudo for privilege escalation, and log who does what. When someone leaves the team, disable their account.

8. Container Security

If you're deploying with Docker, the defaults are insecure. Containers run as root by default, images often include far more than they need, and it's easy to ship known vulnerabilities without realizing it.

Run as a non-root user. This limits the damage if a container is compromised.

FROM node:20-alpine
 
# Create a non-root user
RUN addgroup -g 1001 -S nodejs && adduser -S appuser -u 1001 -G nodejs
 
# Set working directory and copy files
WORKDIR /app
COPY --chown=appuser:nodejs . .
 
# Install dependencies and build
RUN npm ci --only=production
 
# Switch to non-root user before running
USER appuser
 
EXPOSE 3000
CMD ["node", "dist/main.js"]

Use multi-stage builds. Your final image should contain only what's needed to run the app, not your build tools, dev dependencies, or source code.

# Build stage
FROM node:20-alpine AS builder
WORKDIR /app
COPY package*.json ./
RUN npm ci
COPY . .
RUN npm run build
 
# Production stage
FROM node:20-alpine
RUN addgroup -g 1001 -S nodejs && adduser -S appuser -u 1001 -G nodejs
WORKDIR /app
COPY --from=builder --chown=appuser:nodejs /app/dist ./dist
COPY --from=builder --chown=appuser:nodejs /app/node_modules ./node_modules
USER appuser
CMD ["node", "dist/main.js"]

Use minimal base images. node:20-alpine is significantly smaller than node:20 and has a much smaller attack surface. Even better, use distroless images if your stack supports them.

Scan images for vulnerabilities. Tools like docker scout, Snyk, or Trivy can scan your images as part of CI and flag known CVEs in your dependencies or base image.

Don't store secrets in images. Never COPY .env into a Docker image. Use environment variables injected at runtime, or mount secrets from your orchestrator.

9. Environment Variable Security

Never commit secrets to your repository. This sounds obvious, but it's one of the most common security failures in practice. A single .env file pushed to a public repo can expose database credentials, API keys, and signing secrets.

.gitignore is your first line of defense. Make sure .env, .env.local, .env.production, and any other secret files are in your .gitignore before your first commit. Retroactively removing a committed secret doesn't help. It's still in your git history.

# .gitignore
.env
.env.*
!.env.example   # Keep a template with placeholder values

For CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI): Use the platform's built-in secrets management. In GitHub Actions, secrets are stored encrypted and injected as environment variables at runtime. They're masked in logs automatically.

# .github/workflows/deploy.yml
jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - run: npm run deploy
        env:
          DATABASE_URL: ${{ secrets.DATABASE_URL }}
          JWT_SECRET: ${{ secrets.JWT_SECRET }}

For Vercel, Netlify, or similar platforms: Use their environment variable settings in the dashboard. Set different values for development, preview, and production. Never put production secrets in a .env file that gets committed.

Team workflows. When a new developer joins, they need access to development secrets. Don't email them or drop them in Slack. Use a password manager with shared vaults (1Password, Bitwarden) or a dedicated secrets manager (Doppler, HashiCorp Vault). For smaller teams, a shared 1Password vault for development environment variables works well.

Rotate secrets on a schedule and immediately when someone with access leaves the team. This includes database passwords, API keys, JWT signing secrets, and any third-party service credentials.

Monitoring & Response

10. Security Logging

Logging isn't just for debugging. Your security logs are how you detect breaches, investigate incidents, and prove compliance.

At minimum, log every authentication event (successful and failed logins, token refreshes, password resets), every permission change (role assignments, access grants), every data access pattern that touches sensitive records, and every admin action.

Structure your logs as JSON so they're searchable. Include timestamps, user IDs, IP addresses, and the action taken. Don't log sensitive data like passwords, tokens, or full credit card numbers.

// Structured security log
logger.info({
  event: "auth.login.success",
  userId: user.id,
  ip: req.ip,
  userAgent: req.headers["user-agent"] ?? "unknown",
  timestamp: new Date().toISOString(),
});
 
logger.warn({
  event: "auth.login.failed",
  email: req.body.email, // Log the attempted email, not the password
  ip: req.ip,
  reason: "invalid_credentials",
  attemptCount: failedAttempts,
});

Ship your logs to a centralized system. Self-hosted options like Grafana + Loki work well on a budget. Managed services like Datadog or New Relic are more convenient but cost more. The important thing is that your logs survive if the server is compromised, meaning they need to be stored somewhere the attacker can't easily delete them.

Set retention policies based on your compliance requirements. SOC 2 typically requires 1 year. GDPR has its own retention rules. At minimum, keep security logs for 90 days.

11. Intrusion Detection and Alerting

Logs are useless if nobody reads them. Set up automated alerts for patterns that indicate an attack or breach in progress.

Start with the high-signal alerts: a spike in failed login attempts from a single IP or against a single account (brute force), login from an unusual location or device for a given user, privilege escalation (a regular user suddenly accessing admin endpoints), unusual data export volumes (a user downloading 10x their normal amount), and repeated 403/401 responses (someone probing for access).

You don't need an expensive SIEM to start. A simple approach is to have your application emit structured log events for security-relevant actions, aggregate them with a tool like Grafana + Loki or even a simple database table, and write alerting rules that notify your team via Slack, PagerDuty, or email when thresholds are crossed.

As you grow, tools like CrowdStrike, Wazuh (open source), or cloud-native options like AWS GuardDuty provide more sophisticated detection. But the most important thing at the start is that someone gets notified when something unusual happens.

12. Automated Security Scanning in CI/CD

Security scanning should run on every pull request, not as a quarterly afterthought. Integrate these checks into your CI/CD pipeline so vulnerabilities are caught before they reach production.

Dependency scanning. Tools like Snyk, npm audit, or GitHub's Dependabot check your dependencies against known vulnerability databases. Run these on every PR and block merges on critical/high severity findings.

# GitHub Actions example
- name: Security audit
  run: npm audit --audit-level=high
 
- name: Snyk test
  uses: snyk/actions/node@master
  env:
    SNYK_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.SNYK_TOKEN }}

Static analysis. Tools like SonarQube or Semgrep scan your source code for common security anti-patterns: hardcoded secrets, SQL injection risks, insecure crypto usage, and similar issues.

Container scanning. If you're deploying Docker images, scan them for OS-level vulnerabilities with Trivy, Docker Scout, or Snyk Container.

DAST (Dynamic Application Security Testing). Tools like OWASP ZAP can run against a staging environment to test for runtime vulnerabilities like XSS, CSRF, and injection flaws. These are slower and typically run on merges to main rather than on every PR.

The goal is to shift security left, catching issues during development rather than in production.

Compliance & Legal

13. Data Retention Policies

You can't protect data you don't need. Every piece of data you store is a liability, and the simplest way to reduce your attack surface is to stop hoarding data you're not using.

Define retention periods for each category of data you store. User account data might be kept for the life of the account plus a grace period. Payment transaction records might need to be kept for 7 years for tax compliance. Session logs might only need 90 days. Analytics events might be useful for a year.

Implement automatic purging. Don't rely on someone remembering to clean up old data manually. Write scheduled jobs that delete or anonymize data past its retention window.

// Example: Purge expired sessions and old audit logs
async function purgeExpiredData() {
  // Delete sessions older than 30 days
  await prisma.session.deleteMany({
    where: { expiresAt: { lt: new Date() } },
  });
 
  // Anonymize audit logs older than 1 year
  await prisma.auditLog.updateMany({
    where: { createdAt: { lt: subYears(new Date(), 1) } },
    data: { userId: null, ipAddress: null },
  });
}

GDPR gives users the right to request deletion of their data. Even if you're not legally required to comply with GDPR, building this capability early is much easier than retrofitting it when a large customer or regulation demands it.

14. Incident Response Plan

You need a documented incident response plan before you have an incident. In the middle of a breach is not the time to figure out who does what.

Your plan doesn't need to be a 50-page document. For an early-stage startup, a clear one-pager covering these essentials is enough:

Detection. How do you know a breach has occurred? (Your monitoring and alerting from points 10-11.)

Triage. Who gets notified first? What's the severity classification? A leaked API key is different from a full database dump.

Containment. What are the immediate steps? Revoke compromised credentials, rotate secrets, isolate affected systems, disable compromised accounts.

Communication. Who tells customers? When? Most jurisdictions have mandatory breach notification timelines (72 hours under GDPR, varies by US state). Know yours before you need them.

Recovery. How do you restore service? Where are your backups? Have you tested restoring from them?

Post-mortem. After every incident, document what happened, why, and what you're changing to prevent it from happening again. Blameless post-mortems build a culture where people report issues early instead of hiding them.

Keep the plan somewhere accessible (not only on the server that might be compromised). Review it quarterly. Run a tabletop exercise at least once a year where you walk through a hypothetical scenario.

15. Regular Security Audits

Internal code reviews catch some issues, but you need external eyes on your security posture at least annually. Third-party penetration testing by a qualified security firm will find vulnerabilities your team has blind spots for.

For early-stage startups, a focused pentest on your authentication system and API endpoints is the highest-value engagement. A full infrastructure audit can come later as you grow.

If you're pursuing SOC 2 compliance (and you will if you sell to enterprise customers), start your audit preparation early. SOC 2 requires documented policies, access controls, logging, and incident response, essentially everything in this checklist. Companies that build these practices from the start can achieve SOC 2 readiness in weeks. Companies that retrofit them spend months.

Bug bounty programs are another option once you have the maturity to triage reports. Platforms like HackerOne or Bugcrowd give you access to a large community of security researchers. Start with a private program (invite-only) before opening it up publicly.

The Implementation Reality Check

Looking at this list, you're probably thinking: "This will take months to implement properly." You're right. And that's exactly why most startups skip it.

Here's how it typically plays out:

Week 1: You implement basic login/logout. It works, so you move on to features.

Month 3: A customer asks about MFA. Implementing it properly requires database migrations, UI changes, and user communication. It takes two weeks.

Month 6: A potential enterprise customer asks about SOC 2 compliance. You realize you need logging, access controls, and documentation. It takes two months and delays your product roadmap.

Month 12: A security researcher finds a vulnerability. You scramble to patch it, then realize you need to audit your entire codebase for similar issues.

A Progressive Approach

Instead of trying to do everything at once, use this phased approach:

Phase 1: Foundation (Week 1-2). Secure authentication with OAuth 2.0, HTTP-only cookies, basic input validation with Zod or equivalent, HTTPS everywhere, environment variable hygiene, and SSH hardening if self-hosting.

Phase 2: Monitoring (Week 3-4). Structured security logging, rate limiting at both edge and application level, basic alerting for failed auth attempts and unusual patterns.

Phase 3: Advanced (Month 2-3). Automated security scanning in CI/CD, dependency auditing, incident response plan, data retention policies, and preparation for compliance frameworks.

The Tools We Recommend

Don't reinvent the wheel. Use established tools:

• Authentication: Use OAuth 2.0 providers (Google, Microsoft, GitHub) directly. Build your own session layer on top. Use Clerk or Auth0 only if you need to ship in an afternoon and accept the tradeoffs.
• ORM: Prisma, Drizzle, or SQLAlchemy. Parameterized queries by default, no SQL injection.
• Validation: Zod (TypeScript), Joi, or class-validator (NestJS).
• Monitoring: Datadog, New Relic, or self-hosted Grafana + Loki.
• Scanning: Snyk, SonarQube, Trivy, OWASP ZAP.
• Secrets: Doppler, HashiCorp Vault, or 1Password for team secret sharing.
• Edge Security: Cloudflare (free tier is excellent for basic protection and rate limiting).

Start Today

Pick one item from this checklist and implement it this week. Then add one more next week. Small, consistent progress beats trying to do everything at once and getting overwhelmed.

Your future self (and your customers) will thank you.

Need help implementing these security measures? Our team specializes in building secure, compliant applications for startups and enterprises. We've helped companies pass SOC 2 audits and prevent security incidents.