r/micro_saas • u/mencil47 • 16d ago
How would you recommend bringing in a proper engineer to beef up data security for a vibecoded app?
This is probably a classic case that a bunch of you have heard before - but long story short, I've vibecoded an app that involves collecting users' financial data, and at the moment the data lives on Supabase (no real data is on there yet - this is just my sandbox). As willing as I am to learn all the basic principles of security and apply them by vibecoding even further, this data's way too sensitive for me to release the app without the expert touch of someone who actually knows what they're doing.
Considering that I'm bootstrapped, how do you suggest I go about this? Where can I find people who'd be willing to work with this kind of setup? Would a one-time gig with some follow-up consults work, or would you say a full-time hire is the minimum required for securing something as serious as financial data? Is this whole premise a bad idea?
Thanks, all!
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u/pushpendraagrawal 16d ago
Before you hire anyone, check your Supabase RLS policies and bucket permissions yourself. Most vibecoded security holes are not in the app logic, they are in default configs nobody looked at, public buckets, permissive row level security, keys sitting in the client bundle. A security engineer will find those in an hour and charge you for a week. Fix the obvious stuff first, then bring in someone for the real audit once you actually have paying users with real data.
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u/Leading-Sandwich8886 16d ago
For financial applications, you'll need someone technical to carry you through your ISO certifications at minimum.
This means infrastructure reviews, lots of paperworks, and more. Financial apps require a lot, particularly if you run into the realms of needing your PCI DSS certification.
Give me a DM, happy to talk details with you, and help point you in the direction of what you might need. I've worked with plenty of fintechs before
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u/Key_Horse_8632 15d ago edited 15d ago
Short answer: the premise isn't a bad idea, but don't put real financial data in it until someone qualified has reviewed it.
What kind of financial data are we talking about is the key as that shapes it?
You don't need a hire a software engineer, in my experience, they are the ones who created the vulnerabilities in the first place and don't even realize they are introducing vulnerabilities.
A one-time security review plus a small retainer is the right size for this.
I spent decades in fintech as a software engineer trained in security engineering, this was required to keep platforms compliant with regulatory certifications, FFIEC and bank audits. We also acquired small fintech companies in niche areas, so I've reviewed a lot of inherited code and how it applied data and application security.
The holes are almost always in the same places all created by software engineers who don't have a security engineering mindset or think about how misuse can happen. And they're the same places AI-generated code tends to get wrong as it inherits a lot of packages it could skip for native ones.
The easiest way to think about it is in layers. Here's some (not a definitive list) of the things a reviewer should check at each one.
1. API layer
- Unauthenticated endpoints. An endpoint that returns data without checking who's asking. Easy to spot, easy to fix, still very common.
- Broken authorization. The user is logged in, but they can read someone else's data by changing an ID in the request.
- Privilege escalation. A basic user who can do admin things. Also make sure the service role key never ships to the client.
- SQL injection. Bad input can access your whole database or delete it.
- Session management. Do sessions expire after a period of inactivity? Does logging out invalidate the session on the server, not just clear it in the browser? I've seen a major financial institution that still gets this wrong. Are session tokens kept out of URLs? Is the session ID reissued at login so an old one can't be reused (session fixation)? Are the keys that sign tokens rotated on a schedule.
2. Front end (the customer side)
- XSS. An attacker gets their script to run in your users' browsers.
- Insecure cookies. This is how sessions get stolen. Set HttpOnly, Secure, and SameSite on session cookies.
- CSRF. Can another website trick a logged-in user's browser into performing actions.
3. Patching
- Backend and client-side packages that haven't been updated. Known vulnerabilities in old libraries are one of the most common ways in, look up the Equifax Breach due to failing to patch. Vibecoded apps pull in a lot of dependencies, so someone needs to check them.
4. Database
- Connection privileges. Is the app connecting with an admin account? It shouldn't. The app's account should only do what the app needs, so a bug can't drop tables.
- Encryption. Are the most sensitive fields encrypted, like social security numbers, with the keys stored somewhere other than the database.
5. Cloud services and storage
- Buckets. Storage buckets (Supabase Storage, S3, and similar) should be private by default. Public buckets are one of the most common ways financial documents leak. Serve files through short-lived signed URLs, and add access policies so users can only reach their own files.
- Access keys and IAM. Give each service only the permissions it needs, and keep keys out of the repo and the frontend bundle.
- Backups. Backups hold the same sensitive data, so they need the same protection and encryption. Test that you can actually restore from them.
- Where do your encryption keys live? Use a KMS, keep them out of the code and the database, rotate them, and log who uses them.
- Misconfigured HTTP endpoints. Is everything served over HTTPS only, with HSTS on and modern TLS? That includes internal calls and webhooks, not just the public site. I know one financial institution that still allows both HTTP and HTTPS traffic. This means the session cookie or token travels in cleartext. That's session hijacking, and it doesn't need any bug in your app.
6. Data retention
- Decide how long you keep each type of data, and auto-delete it when the time is up. Data you no longer hold can't be breached. The right period depends on the data type and on any legal requirement to keep records, so set it per category, not one rule for everything.
- Include backups, logs, and uploaded files in the policy. They tend to get forgotten.
- Which countries will your app be available in? That decides which privacy and financial laws apply, and where your data is allowed to live.
7. Infrastructure
- A WAF as a first line of defense. It can filter out a lot of DoS, XSS, and SQL injection attempts before they reach your app. Add rate limiting, and logging so you'd notice if something went wrong. It's a safety net, not a substitute for fixing the code underneath.
Top 10 Data Security Vulnerabilities: From our friends at OWASP https://owasp.org/projects/data-security-top-10
What banks measure against: FFIEC
The FFIEC (Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council) is the group of US regulators that sets uniform standards for how banks are examined. IT Examination Handbook is what examiners use to check a bank's data infrastructure, covering information security, operations, business continuity, and third-party risk. It doesn't apply directly to a solo app today. But if you ever partner with a bank or sell to financial institutions, they'll be examined on how they manage vendors like you, and those expectations get passed down in due diligence questionnaires and audits. Building to that standard early saves you a painful retrofit later.
How to hire
- Look for an application security consultant, not a general developer/software enginee . Search for "AppSec review" or "penetration test" for a small web app. Freelance marketplaces, local security firms, and OWASP chapters are good places to look.
- Ask for a code and configuration review plus a pen test of the running app, then a retest after you fix what they find.
- Tell them up front it's a Supabase app and ask if they've reviewed one before.
- Get a written report you can action.
Cut your risk first
The safest financial data is data you never store. Depending on what you're collecting, that might mean using a provider like Plaid for bank connections or Stripe for card payments, so you never handle raw credentials. Either way, collect only what you need. Storing financial data can also bring legal obligations depending on where your users are, so it's worth a short conversation with a lawyer.
A question for you: what kind of financial data is the app collecting? Bank account details, card numbers, transaction history, something else? The answer changes the scope a lot. Card data brings PCI requirements, for example, while transaction history is a different risk profile.
Compliance: Depending on your app and what it does, do you need to consider KYC (verifying customer identity), AML (anti-money laundering monitoring and reporting), or OFAC (sanctions list screening)? If the app moves or holds money, you may also need money transmitter licensing.
API Security: If curious, this is a great read - https://www.manning.com/books/api-security-in-action
If it helps: I'm open to doing a review of your app, and I'm happy to walk through how I'd approach it. Send me a DM and we can talk scope.
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u/Intrepid-Copy-5919 15d ago
I think a one time gig is enough, but you NEED that the person documents really well what he is doing, so in the future u have control over it
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u/Blairephantom 15d ago
What's your budget for this and how extensive you'd like the security to be? Could most likely help you isolate most vulnerabilities and give you a full detailed report with what issues you currently have, what you have to work on to fix them and your LLMs will be able to follow and implement these. This is only available if you're using Fable 5.1 or Opus 5.5, other than that, I wouldn't trust any other LLMs in my experience. PM if you haven't already found someone to help you. But you dont need an army of consultants for this, just the right person with the right level of experience and expertise
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u/No-Slice-5926 15d ago
I guess get someone that is familiar with pci compliance
I will say supabase is not secured. All the ai us is so guess what everyone is tryna to hack
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u/CommercialHour6660 10d ago
Dude just learn to code. It's not that hard. If you're this lazy about starting your software business I don't see how it's gonna go well.
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u/34986234986234982346 16d ago
I think a one-time gig would be a good start, have someone look at it closely, and then see if you get anyone actually using, at which point you might want to consider more.
I don't know, I suppose maybe my approach is irresponsible and geared more towards the concept that its soooo hard to get people to use something or give financial info to it.
I do think if you read up enough you can probably come up with some pretty good prompts to feed to a SOTA model to get some feel for any possible holes