Security checklist for AI-generated applications: auth, RBAC, payments
AI speeds up shipping, but security debt compounds faster. Whether you're shipping with a quiz app builder AI, an AI web design tool, or a healthcare app builder AI, use this pragmatic checklist to keep credentials, money, and data safe.
Authentication: prove the human, bind the device
- Use OIDC with short-lived tokens; require PKCE for all public clients and rotate refresh tokens on use.
- Prefer WebAuthn or passkeys; fall back to TOTP, never SMS alone. Enforce step-up MFA for payment or PHI access.
- Harden sessions: SameSite=strict, secure, HttpOnly; bind tokens to user agent and IP risk signals.
- Validate JWT exp, iss, aud; pin the JWKs URL and cache keys briefly to limit key-rotation race windows.
Authorization and tenancy
- Adopt deny-by-default RBAC with resource-level checks; use ABAC for contextual limits like org, region, and data sensitivity.
- Enforce row-level security in the database; add explicit tenant_id predicates in every query and verify with integration tests.
- Treat policies as code (OPA/Cedar); review with pull requests and unit tests for privilege escalation paths.
Payments and PCI
- Keep card data out of your servers; use tokenized fields and SAQ A scope. Encrypt all PII in transit and at rest with envelope keys.
- Verify webhooks with HMAC, clock skew tolerance, and replay protection. Require idempotency keys on all charge endpoints.
- Canonicalize currency and amount; guard against floating-point errors; capture customer consent and 3DS2 where required.
AI-specific defenses
- Sandbox LLM tools; allowlist network egress; never let prompts fetch secrets. Redact secrets from prompts and logs.
- Validate model outputs against strict schemas; reject and re-prompt on deviation; rate-limit to blunt prompt-spray attacks.
- Filter user-generated content and model text for injection, XSS, and SSRF markers before rendering or calling tools.
Healthcare and regulated data
- Isolate PHI in separate projects and keys; encrypt with HSM-backed KMS; sign a BAA with every subprocesser.
- Log access with purpose of use; run DLP on exports; set region locks to satisfy residency constraints.
Real-world drills
- Quiz app builder AI: fuzz quizzes to bypass paywalls; ensure per-attempt limits and signed URLs for media.
- AI web design tool: strip untrusted HTML/CSS/JS from templates; enforce CSP, SRI, and a template sandbox.
- Healthcare app builder AI: require break-glass with justifications; auto-expire elevated access and alert compliance.
Operational controls
- Apply per-user and per-IP rate limits; throttle costly tools. Centralize logs to a SIEM and set anomaly alerts.
- Back up data and configs; test restores quarterly. Rotate keys, secrets, and signing certs on a fixed cadence.
Ship fast, but codify security as templates, checklists, and tests in your AI pipelines-so every generated app starts safe by default. Measure with SLIs and error budgets; gate releases on passing automated security regression suites nightly.
