Security checklist for AI-generated apps: auth, RBAC, payments
Shipping with AI accelerators is great-shipping safely is better. Use this concise, field-tested checklist to harden apps produced by a GraphQL API builder AI, a role-based access control generator, or a newsletter platform builder AI.
Threat model first
- Map assets: PII, payment tokens, secrets, and business reports.
- Enumerate actors: end users, admins, vendors, and automation.
- Diagram flows; mark trust boundaries and data classification.
Authentication
- Enforce MFA for admins; adopt passkeys for staff SSO.
- Short tokens, long refresh; rotate signing keys quarterly.
- Pin OAuth scopes; verify PKCE on public clients.
- Lock sessions on role or password changes; device binding for high-risk flows.
Authorization and RBAC
- Generate policies with your role-based access control generator, but review manually for least privilege.
- Version permissions; add break-glass roles with time-boxed approvals.
- Add attribute checks (tenant, region, data sensitivity) to every decision.
GraphQL-specific controls
- Disable production introspection; require persisted operations.
- Set depth, cost, and rate limits; throttle per user and per token.
- Authorize at field and resolver; never trust parent object ownership.
- Validate input rigorously; prevent N+1 data leaks via batching rules.
- Log denied queries with redaction; alert on enumeration patterns.
Payments and webhooks
- Never touch raw card data; use tokens and 3DS where applicable.
- Verify webhook signatures, timestamps, and replay windows.
- Use idempotency keys; reconcile amounts and currency server-side.
- Maintain an append-only ledger; separate refund and payout rights.
Email and newsletter safety
- From a newsletter platform builder AI, require double opt-in and signed unsubscribe links.
- Store consent receipts with IP, time, and policy version.
- Template sandboxing; block user-supplied HTML and remote scripts.
- DKIM, SPF, DMARC at enforcement; monitor complaint rates.
Secrets, builds, and runtime
- Keep secrets in KMS; rotate automatically; block .env in repos.
- Pin dependencies; include SBOM; verify signatures on build.
- Set Content Security Policy; deny-by-default CORS; HSTS preload.
- Segregate tenants by database or schema; encrypt per-tenant keys.
Testing and monitoring
- Contract-test every permission; fuzz GraphQL queries.
- Synthetic fraud runs for payments; chaos test webhook outages.
- Centralize audit logs; immutable storage; alert on privilege escalation.
Operational readiness
- Define SLAs and SLOs; enforce error budgets before feature flags flip.
- Run access reviews monthly; remove dormant service accounts automatically.
- Create runbooks for auth outages, payment disputes, and webhook retries.
- Practice disaster recovery; rotate backups, test restores, and verify RPO/RTO.
- Continuously prompt-tune AI generators with red-team findings; gate releases via policy-as-code.
- Record decisions; tie risks to owners and deadlines.
AI can write scaffolds; accountability is yours. For a GraphQL API builder AI, codify security as code reviews and query whitelists. For a role-based access control generator, pair generated policies with human threat modeling. For a newsletter platform builder AI, make consent and deliverability the safety rails. Ship fast-and safe.
