Enterprise Security Checklist for AI-Generated Apps: Auth to Pay
A practical, enterprise-grade security checklist for AI-built apps covering authentication, RBAC, GraphQL, payments, audits, and secrets-ready for reviews.
AI can ship features fast; attackers move faster. Use this zero-fluff checklist to harden apps built with a GraphQL API builder AI, a role-based access control generator, or a newsletter platform builder AI.
Identity and session integrity
- Enforce passkeys or SSO with MFA; disable password reuse and set 90-day rotation for privileged admins.
- Issue short-lived JWTs; use same-site, secure, HttpOnly cookies, and rotate signing keys via JWKS.
- Harden OAuth/OIDC: strict redirect allowlists, PKCE, state, and mTLS for service-to-service.
- Protect sessions with device binding and automatic revocation on role or scope change.
Authorization and data boundaries
- Prefer least privilege RBAC; map personas to roles; separate admin, operator, and reader.
- Use a role-based access control generator, then add ABAC rules for tenant, region, and data sensitivity.
- Enforce field- and record-level checks in services, not just UI; deny by default.
- Centralize policy as code (e.g., OPA) and test with realistic fixtures and negative cases.
GraphQL-specific defenses
- Disable introspection in production; allow via a guarded admin role only.
- Apply depth, breadth, and cost limits; use persisted queries and query safelists.
- Prevent N+1 by batching (DataLoader); add complexity meters and per-field rate limits.
- If using a GraphQL API builder AI, review generated resolvers for auth gaps and injection.
Payments and webhooks
- Never store raw PAN; rely on provider tokenization and vaulting; scope to SAQ-A if possible.
- Validate webhook signatures (HMAC/mTLS); reject unsigned, stale, or replayed events.
- Reconcile idempotently; persist a payment timeline for audits and dispute handling.
- For a newsletter platform builder AI, require verified domains, DMARC/DKIM, and bounce/abuse webhooks.
Audit, secrets, and supply chain
- Emit immutable, structured logs with user, role, resource, decision, and request-ID; stream to SIEM.
- Encrypt at rest and in transit; rotate KMS keys; use per-tenant keys where law or risk requires.
- Secrets live in a vault; no secrets in code, prompts, or CI logs; enable workload identity.
- Pin dependencies, generate an SBOM, and gate releases on vulnerability and license policies.
- Threat-model AI scaffolds: prompt-injection, data leakage, insecure defaults; document mitigations.
Operational and runtime guardrails
- Set per-tenant rate limits; alert on spikes and anomalies.
- Lock CORS to strict allowlists; enforce CSRF for browser GraphQL.
- Return safe errors; disable traces; test restores thoroughly.
Before shipping, run this checklist as a release gate. Record evidence: screenshots of RBAC tests, GraphQL safelist diffs, webhook signature proofs, and payment provider attestations. Whether you used a GraphQL API builder AI, a role-based access control generator, or a newsletter platform builder AI, security ownership stays with you-and this list keeps you honest.
