Launch Ready cyber security Checklist for AI-built SaaS app: Ready for first 100 users in marketplace products?.

Launch Ready cyber security Checklist for AI-built SaaS app: Ready for first 100 users in marketplace products?

"Ready" does not mean the app works on your laptop.

For an AI-built SaaS app aimed at the first 100 users in a marketplace product, ready means this: a stranger can sign up, verify email, pay or connect their account, use the core workflow, and not expose your data, your users' data, or your admin systems. It also means the product survives real traffic spikes, bad inputs, and basic attack attempts without breaking onboarding or leaking secrets.

My bar is simple. If you cannot say "yes" to zero exposed secrets, passing SPF/DKIM/DMARC, HTTPS everywhere, locked-down auth, monitored uptime, and no obvious admin bypasses, you are not launch ready. You are demo ready at best.

For marketplace products, the risk is higher because users arrive from listings, ads, or integrations with low trust and high intent. A single broken redirect, email failure, auth bug, or exposed API key can kill conversion fast and create support load before you have even reached 100 users.

Quick Scorecard

| Check | Pass criteria | Why it matters | What breaks if it fails | |---|---|---|---| | Domain and DNS | Apex and www resolve correctly, subdomains mapped cleanly | Users need a stable entry point | Broken links, bad SEO, failed callbacks | | SSL everywhere | All public routes force HTTPS with valid certs | Prevents interception and browser warnings | Trust loss, login failures | | Email auth | SPF, DKIM, and DMARC all pass | Protects deliverability and brand trust | Emails land in spam or get spoofed | | Secrets hygiene | Zero secrets in codebase or logs | Stops immediate compromise | API abuse, billing fraud, data leaks | | Auth controls | No auth bypass on signup, login, reset, admin paths | Core account security depends on it | Account takeover or admin exposure | | Input validation | Server rejects malformed and oversized input | Blocks injection and bad state | Data corruption, crashes, abuse | | Rate limiting | Login, signup, reset flows rate limited | Reduces brute force and bot abuse | Credential stuffing and spam signups | | Cloudflare/WAF | DDoS protection and basic filtering enabled | Shields early-stage infra from noise attacks | Downtime and noisy support tickets | | Monitoring | Uptime alerts and error tracking active | Lets you see failures before users do | Silent outages and delayed fixes | | Deployment safety | Production deploy has rollback path and env separation | Prevents bad releases from taking you down | Broken app after deploy |

The Checks I Would Run First

1. Public surface audit

• Signal: I look for every public route: landing page, signup, login, reset password, webhook endpoints, API docs if any.
• Tool or method: browser crawl plus route review in the codebase.
• Fix path: remove dead routes from production exposure, lock admin paths behind role checks, and make sure redirects do not leak tokens or session data.

2. Secret exposure scan

• Signal: I check for API keys in repo history, frontend bundles, `.env` files committed by accident, logs that print headers or tokens.
• Tool or method: secret scanning plus grep through build output.
• Fix path: rotate anything exposed immediately. Move secrets to environment variables only on the server side and remove them from client bundles.

3. Authentication and authorization test

• Signal: I try to access another user's data by changing IDs, calling protected endpoints without a token, and testing password reset flow edge cases.
• Tool or method: manual API requests with Postman or curl.
• Fix path: enforce server-side authorization on every object read/write. Never trust client-side role flags.

4. Email deliverability check

• Signal: signup emails arrive reliably and are not flagged as spoofed.
• Tool or method: validate SPF/DKIM/DMARC records with a DNS checker and send test messages to Gmail/Outlook.
• Fix path: add correct DNS records through Cloudflare or your email provider. For launch readiness I want SPF/DKIM/DMARC passing with no warnings.

5. Rate limit and abuse check

• Signal: repeated login attempts do not hammer your backend forever.
• Tool or method: run repeated requests against signup/login/reset endpoints.
• Fix path: add IP-based throttling plus per-account throttling on sensitive routes. Add CAPTCHA only where needed; do not make the whole product annoying.

6. Monitoring and rollback check

• Signal: you know when the app fails within minutes.
• Tool or method: confirm uptime monitoring pings the right URL and error tracking captures exceptions with release tags.
• Fix path: wire alerts to email or Slack before launch. Keep one-click rollback ready so a bad deploy does not turn into a full outage.

SPF v=spf1 include:_spf.provider.com ~all
DKIM selector set by provider
DMARC v=DMARC1; p=quarantine; rua=mailto:dmarc@yourdomain.com

That snippet is not decoration. It is the minimum email trust layer for a marketplace SaaS that expects strangers to verify accounts without getting blocked by inbox providers.

Red Flags That Need a Senior Engineer

1. You have no idea where secrets live

• If keys are scattered across Lovable exports, frontend env files, GitHub history, screenshots, or chat logs, stop DIYing. This becomes an incident response problem fast.

2. Your auth is mostly client-side

• If role checks happen in React state instead of on the server for every request, that is a serious access control bug waiting to happen.

3. Webhooks are unauthenticated

• Marketplace products often depend on Stripe-like events or partner callbacks. If you accept webhooks without signature verification or replay protection, anyone can forge state changes.

4. You cannot explain your deployment path

• If you do not know what goes to staging vs production vs preview environments,

one bad push can overwrite live settings or expose test data.

5. You already saw weird traffic or login abuse

• A few bot signups may seem harmless until they drain support time and pollute analytics. If abuse has started before launch day one hundred users will magnify it.

DIY Fixes You Can Do Today

1. Turn on HTTPS redirects everywhere

• Force `https://` for apex domain and `www`. Check that old links redirect once only with no loops.

2. Rotate any key you pasted into chat tools

• Assume anything shared outside your secret manager is compromised enough to replace now.

3. Review your `.env` files

• Make sure only server runtime variables contain sensitive values. Anything used in frontend code should be treated as public.

4. Set up basic monitoring

• Use UptimeRobot or similar for uptime checks plus Sentry for errors. Even a simple alert is better than finding outages through user complaints.

5. Test email deliverability manually

• Send signup confirmation emails to Gmail and Outlook accounts you control. Confirm they land in inbox rather than spam before opening the doors.

Where Cyprian Takes Over

If your checklist shows multiple failures across domain setup, email trust, deployment safety, or secret handling, I would not patch this piecemeal over several weekends.

The Launch Ready service is built for exactly this stage: domain, email, Cloudflare, SSL, deployment, secrets,

Here is how I map failures to delivery:

| Failure found in checklist | What I fix in Launch Ready | |---|---| | DNS confusion or broken subdomains | DNS cleanup, redirects setup so apex/www/subdomains resolve correctly | | No SSL enforcement | Cloudflare SSL configuration plus forced HTTPS | | Slow static assets or weak caching | Cloudflare caching rules tuned for launch traffic | | Bot noise or basic attack exposure | DDoS protection plus sane edge filtering | | Email lands in spam | SPF/DKIM/DMARC records configured correctly | | Secrets exposed in repo/builds/logs | Environment variable audit plus secret cleanup plan | | Production deploy is fragile | Production deployment review with safe handover steps | | No visibility after launch | Uptime monitoring setup plus alert routing | | No handover docs for founder team | Handover checklist covering what changed and what to watch |

My recommended path is simple:

• Day 1: audit domain/email/deployment/secrets.
• Day 2: implement fixes at the edge and production layer.
• Handover at 48 hours with a checklist you can use without me.

For founders trying to get first 100 users from marketplace products, this is cheaper than losing two days of signups because email failed, or spending weeks chasing an auth issue that should never have shipped.

Delivery Map

References

• roadmap.sh cyber security best practices: https://roadmap.sh/cyber-security
• roadmap.sh API security best practices: https://roadmap.sh/api-security-best-practices
• roadmap.sh code review best practices: https://roadmap.sh/code-review-best-practices
• Cloudflare SSL/TLS overview: https://developers.cloudflare.com/ssl/
• OWASP Top 10: https://owasp.org/www-project-top-ten/

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Take the next step

If this is a problem in your product right now, here is what to do next:

• [Use the free Cyprian tools](/tools) - estimate cost, score app risk, check launch readiness, or pick the right service sprint.

• [Book a discovery call](/contact) - I will tell you honestly whether you need a sprint or if you can DIY the next step.

*Written by Cyprian Tinashe Aarons - senior full-stack and AI engineer helping founders rescue, launch, automate, and scale AI-built products.*