The security practices that actually matter for a solopreneur are simpler than enterprise playbooks suggest: use built-in authentication instead of rolling your own, let your platform handle payment processing, and choose tools with managed databases.
Most security advice is written for teams with dedicated engineers, penetration testing budgets, and compliance officers. That 47-point checklist you found on Google wasn't written for someone launching their first revenue-generating app.
This guide covers the best mobile app security practices that actually matter for solopreneurs, so you can launch a secure app without becoming a security engineer or delaying your launch for checklists that were never meant for you.
The solopreneur threat model
Enterprise apps face sophisticated targeted attacks, underscoring the need for security teams, bug bounties, and million-dollar penetration testing budgets. Your app faces a different issue: opportunistic scanning.
Bots crawl the internet looking for common vulnerabilities:
- Exposed credentials
- Unpatched software
- Misconfigured access controls
- Payment data stored in plain text
These attacks aren't personal—they're automated programs hitting thousands of sites per hour, looking for low-hanging fruit.
This distinction matters because the countermeasures are proportionally simpler. You don't need a security operations center; you need to avoid storing passwords in plain text and stop leaving your database publicly accessible. The five practices in this guide address exactly these threats.
The DIY security trap
Here's where solopreneurs and non-technical entrepreneurs actually get hurt: DIY security implementations.
Research on AI-generated code shows that approximately 45% of code samples contain security vulnerabilities when developers build security features themselves, and the pattern holds whether you're hand-coding authentication or asking ChatGPT to create a login system. Rolling your own security is where things break.
The safest approach isn't learning security—it's using platforms that handle it automatically. When your app builder sets up authentication or when Stripe handles payments, you inherit years of security engineering without writing a line of security code yourself.
Security theater
There's another trap worth naming: security theater.
Solopreneurs who try to build enterprise-grade security before launch often never launch at all. You start researching password hashing, fall into a debate about bcrypt vs. Argon2, realize you need to understand salting, wonder about rate limiting, and suddenly it's three weeks later with nothing launched.
A solopreneur doesn't need penetration testing or SOC 2 compliance before their first paying customer—they need their app not to leak passwords and not store credit cards, which are solved problems if you use the right tools.
Practice 1: Never roll your own authentication
Authentication is one of the most common sources of security breaches for small applications, and it's also where app builders most often try to be clever—which is precisely where that cleverness backfires.
The hidden complexity is staggering. A "simple" login system actually requires:
- Secure password hashing with proper salting
- Session management that prevents hijacking
- Token handling that expires appropriately
- Forgot-password flows that don't leak information
- Rate limiting to prevent brute force attacks
- Secure cookie settings and CSRF protection
- Account lockout policies
Each of these has nuances that security professionals have spent decades refining.
Why built-in authentication matters
That's why built-in authentication matters so much. When you use Google Sign-in, Apple Sign-in, or email/password flows handled by your platform, you skip all this complexity: no OAuth configuration, no token management, and no security rules to write.
Platforms like Anything can help you handle password storage so you never see the actual password, manage sessions automatically, or implement the security measures that would take you months to build correctly.
Here's a simple test: if adding authentication to your app requires you to understand OAuth flows, token rotation, or session management, you're overcomplicating it. The goal is to describe what you want and let the platform handle the security details.
Practice 2: Let someone else handle payments
Never touch card data—this isn't just a best practice; it's a way to avoid a regulatory nightmare that could sink your business before it even starts.
PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) applies if you handle card data directly. Compliance requires:
- Regular security assessments
- Network segmentation
- Encryption standards
- Access controls and monitoring systems
- Documentation that would make a government bureaucrat weep with joy
For a solopreneur, achieving PCI compliance independently is effectively impossible.
How Stripe solves this
Stripe integration solves this entirely. When a customer enters their card number during Stripe-powered checkout, that data is sent directly to Stripe's servers and never touches your app, database, or code.
Stripe handles tokenization (replacing card numbers with safe references), fraud detection, secure storage, and compliance—which means you get a token that lets you charge the card without ever seeing the actual card number.
Using platforms with built-in Stripe integration makes such a difference. When payment processing is a native feature rather than something you configure manually, you inherit enterprise-grade payment security. You can accept payments without security liability and without writing any payment-handling code.
Red flags to watch for
- Any flow where card numbers pass through your database
- Any setup that requires you to store card data "temporarily"
- Any integration that has you handling raw card numbers in your backend code
Search your codebase for "card_number" or test card patterns like "4242"—if you find matches outside test files, something is wrong.
Practice 3: Use managed databases, not DIY infrastructure
Your app’s database is more secure than anything you'd configure yourself. This isn't an insult to your abilities; it's a recognition that database security involves a minefield of configuration that even experienced developers can fall into.
The configuration minefield
Setting up a database securely requires decisions about:
- Access controls (who can read, write, and delete)
- Encryption at rest (protecting data on disk)
- Encryption in transit (protecting data moving over networks)
- Backup policies (how often, how long retained, how secure)
- Connection security (SSL/TLS requirements)
- Network isolation (preventing unauthorized access)
- Audit logging (tracking who accessed what)
Each decision has implications for the others, and a single misconfiguration can expose your entire dataset.
What managed databases give you
This is why managed databases eliminate entire categories of vulnerabilities because you get:
- Automatic backups without intervention
- Encrypted connections by default
- Access controls are configured correctly from the start
- Network isolation that prevents public internet access to raw database ports
- Professional monitoring for suspicious activity
Here's where solopreneurs get stuck: manually configuring database security rules. Row-level security policies, API key scoping, and access control lists require precise configuration—and when your platform owns the database layer end-to-end, these configurations are handled correctly by default, so you avoid the configuration mistakes that cause breaches.
The practical benefit is that you focus on what your app does rather than whether your database is properly locked down.
Practice 4: HTTPS by default
If your platform doesn't handle HTTPS automatically, switch platforms.
HTTPS protects data in transit—the information moving between your users' browsers and your servers. Without it, anyone on the same network (a coffee shop's WiFi, a hotel, or an airport) can potentially see everything your users send and receive, including login credentials, personal information, and payment details.
Beyond privacy, HTTPS prevents session hijacking (attackers stealing logged-in sessions) and man-in-the-middle attacks (attackers modifying data as it passes through), which makes it the baseline for any app that handles user data.
The certificate management headache
The certificate management headache is real if you're doing this yourself. SSL/TLS certificates need to be obtained, installed, configured correctly, and renewed before they expire (usually every 90 days for free certificates, or annually for paid ones). Miss a renewal, and your site shows scary "Not Secure" warnings that destroy user trust.
Here's how to check: visit your live app URL and look at the address bar. If it shows "https://" with a lock icon, you're good. If it shows "http://" or security warnings, something is wrong and needs immediate attention.
Practice 5: Don't store data you don't need
The most secure data is data you never collected. This principle is evident in theory but ignored in practice. Solopreneurs and non-technical entrepreneurs default to "we might need this later" and end up storing data that becomes liability.
Data minimization is a security strategy because breaches have a blast radius. When something goes wrong—and eventually, something always does—damage is proportional to what was exposed. An app that stores names and emails has a minor problem compared to one that also stores birthdates, government IDs, and detailed activity logs.
Questions to ask yourself
Think critically about what you actually need:
- Do you need a user's full birthdate, or just verification they're over 18? Store a boolean instead of a date.
- Do you need their full address, or just their time zone for scheduling?
- Do you need detailed analytics on every click, or just aggregate usage patterns?
- Do you need to store support conversation history forever, or can you delete it after 90 days?
Common over-collection patterns
- Storing full activity logs when summaries would suffice
- Keeping user preferences you'll never actually use for personalization
- Retaining support tickets indefinitely "just in case"
- Collecting demographic data for analytics
- Storing user-generated content backups in your own database instead of letting users manage exports
Before adding a field to your user profile or a new table to your database, ask yourself whether you need this to provide value to users or whether you're collecting it because it seems like something apps collect.
If it's the latter, skip it—you can always add fields later if they become genuinely necessary, but you can't un-expose data after a breach.
Five-minute mobile app security audit
You can verify your app's security posture in under five minutes by walking through these checks:
Check your login flow. Open your app and try signing in. Does it use your platform's built-in authentication (e.g., Google or email/password) or handle it natively? Or did you build something custom? If you wrote authentication code yourself, you're taking on unnecessary risk.
Check your payment flow. If your app accepts payments, walk through a test purchase and notice whether the card entry occurs in a Stripe-branded interface or in something you built. Then search your database for any field that might contain card numbers—if you find anything resembling payment data, something is wrong.
Check your database setup. Is your database the platform's managed instance, or did you spin up your own? If you configured security rules manually, review them now, or better yet, migrate to a managed solution where you don't have to make those decisions.
Check your URL. Visit your live app and look at the address bar. Does it show "https://" with a lock icon? If you see "http://" or security warnings, fix this immediately.
Check your data model. Review your database schema and ask whether each field provides value. Could you store less information—a boolean instead of a date, a summary instead of a detailed log? Delete or stop collecting anything that fails this test.
If your app passes all five checks, you've addressed the vulnerabilities that actually target solo builder apps. If any check fails, you have specific, actionable work to do—not a vague sense that security needs improvement, but a concrete item to fix.
When you actually need more security
There comes a point where solopreneur security practices aren't enough, and recognizing that point—without reaching for enterprise solutions before you get there—is part of building intelligently.
Signs you've outgrown the five-minute audit
- Enterprise customers are asking for security certifications
- Healthcare data is subject to HIPAA
- Financial data under specific regulations
- European users under GDPR at substantial volume
- Actual targeted attacks rather than opportunistic scanning
These situations require a professional security review.
What leveling up looks like
Leveling up looks like penetration testing by qualified professionals, SOC 2 Type II certification (which takes months and costs tens of thousands of dollars), dedicated security review of your codebase, formal incident response plans, and potentially hiring or contracting security specialists.
The timing principle matters here. These investments make sense after product-market fit, not before launch. A habit-tracking app with 10 users doesn't need SOC 2 compliance, but a B2B tool that signs enterprise contracts with Fortune 500 companies does.
Start with solid defaults, launch your app, and validate that people will pay for it. Then invest in additional security as your business justifies it—this is the right order.
Launch secure apps without the security theater
For solopreneurs, the most significant security risk is never launching, not weak encryption or missing penetration tests. Every month spent chasing enterprise checklists is a month competitors are serving customers and learning from real usage.
Your platform choice is your security strategy. The builders making real money on their apps didn't spend months on security certifications—they used built-in auth and Stripe without configuring a single database security rule.
These are the best practices for mobile app security—built-in auth, Stripe for payments, managed databases, automatic HTTPS, and data minimization—and they take minutes to verify. Run through the five-minute audit of your current project, or, if you're starting fresh, choose a platform that handles these defaults.
Anything builds in authentication, Stripe payments, managed databases, and automatic HTTPS from your first prompt, so you can focus on what makes your app valuable instead of configuring security infrastructure.
