Enterprise Security Checklist for AI-Generated Applications
Shipping apps from a text to app platform is fast, but speed without guardrails invites risk. Use this focused, field-tested checklist to drive security hardening for AI-built apps, whether scaffolded by an AI web design tool or a codegen agent.
Authentication
- Adopt OIDC/OAuth2 with passkeys or WebAuthn; disable long-lived passwords.
- Short-lived sessions: 15-30 min idle, absolute timeout, and device binding.
- JWTs: RS256/ES256, 5-15 min expiry, rotation for refresh tokens, and audience checks.
- Step-up auth for payments, exports, and admin actions; log verified assurance level.
Authorization and RBAC
- Map roles from business capabilities, not org charts; document deny-first defaults.
- Use ABAC for context (tenant, region, risk score). Evaluate policies server-side.
- Enforce at the data tier: row-level security, least-privilege SQL grants, scoped indexes.
- Externalize policy with OPA/OpenFGA; include policy unit tests and golden traces.
- Admin boundaries: break-glass requires dual approval and time-bounded tokens.
Payments
- Keep PCI scope to SAQ A: never handle card data; rely on provider tokenization.
- Verify webhook signatures and timestamps; rotate secrets and pin source IPs.
- Use idempotency keys and replay detection; reconcile ledgers nightly.
- Strong customer authentication (3DS2), currency/amount re-validation server-side.
- Lock price references by SKU IDs; never trust client totals or discounts.
Data Protection and Secrets
- PII at rest: AES-256 with cloud KMS; enable per-tenant keys for regulated data.
- PII in transit: TLS 1.2+ with HSTS and secure cookie flags (HttpOnly, SameSite=Strict).
- Secrets in a vault with per-service identities; rotate on deploy and upon exposure.
App Surface and Integrations
- CSP with nonces; sanitize HTML; block risky schemes; strict MIME sniffing.
- CSRF on state-changing routes; global rate limits plus user/tenant quotas.
- Harden uploads: type/size checks, AV scan, store outside webroot, presigned URLs.
- SSRF defenses for AI connectors; egress allowlists; DNS rebind protections.
- Pin dependencies; generate an SBOM; auto-patch critical CVEs within 48 hours.
AI-Specific Safeguards
- Defense against prompt injection: system prompts locked server-side and red-teamed.
- Output filtering and PII redaction; sandbox tool execution with least privilege.
- Scan AI-generated code with SAST/secret scanners; gate merges on policy violations.
Testing and Monitoring
- Security unit tests per endpoint; fuzz auth flows and payment webhooks.
- Synthetic user journeys with canaries; anomaly alerts to your SIEM.
- RASP or WAF with bot mitigation; capture authz decisions in append-only audit logs.
Multi-Tenant and Operational Readiness
- Enforce tenant isolation with org IDs in every query and cache key.
- Per-tenant throttle, budget limits, and egress controls to contain blast radius.
- Backup, restore, and key-rotation drills quarterly; record recovery time objectives.
- Runbooks for auth outages and payment failures; practice game-days with stakeholders.
Before launch, run this checklist as a CI job. Treat failures as ship blockers, and make your text to app platform prove conformance with artifacts, not promises. Security is product work.
