How this overlooked risk can collapse your startup overnight

Bill Gates once said, “The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will increase efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will increase inefficiency.”

Startup founders rarely think of their companies as inefficient, due to the many tasks they have to perform simultaneously and the need to keep up with rapid technology trends, but their engineering culture often is. While such founders focus on things like rapid iteration and launching minimum viable products (MVP), they often overlook the fundamentals of secure development.

This is why the real cybersecurity threat startups face isn’t hostile foreign actors or futuristic artificial intelligence exploits; it’s the culture of prioritizing speed that quietly reduces security effectiveness until one untested feature, dependency, or access control flaw causes everything to collapse.

Related: Weak (or non-existent) cybersecurity is taking a huge toll on small businesses. Here’s how to protect yours.

Startup culture often prioritizes speed over security

Startup culture tends to thrive on speed as members remain committed to development and staying abreast of technological innovations. The success of internal teams is measured by factors such as rapid iteration and short-term growth rates. Furthermore, product delivery is rewarded, while safety is seen as something that is nice to have, but not necessarily essential. Unfortunately, the lack of focus on security can create blind spots, leading to system weaknesses.

It’s quite common for developers to rely heavily on unverified open source libraries, copied and pasted code from forums or GitHub, and outdated dependencies with known exploits. Continuous integration pipelines often skip security testing altogether. Few start-up companies set aside time or budget for security measures, including code audits, threat modeling, or even the adoption of basic secure coding standards.

Such procedures can create structural vulnerabilities, making companies increasingly vulnerable to security shortcomings as they advance in other areas. The code that powers tomorrow’s unicorns is often an unfunded patchwork, with security debt growing faster than technical debt.

One step away from destruction

After witnessing the results of thousands of audits over the years, I began to notice recurring patterns, many of which inevitably led to business failures. For example, reused code that has not been properly audited can lead to critical vulnerabilities. Backdoors sneak into production – sometimes unintentionally, sometimes not. Insecure access control allows anyone with the right information to access and manipulate core systems.

Startup culture has convinced itself that rapid innovation means survival, but honestly, many of these companies are just one step away from complete collapse due to their lack of security procedures. And these collapses can be caused by a single insecure feature or a compromised third-party dependency, which can result in multi-million dollar losses in minutes.

Related: Your company’s security strategy has a glaring hole. Here’s what causes it and how to fix it.

Misplaced trust: Developers are not trained in security

It’s unrealistic to expect developers to be security experts, but startups routinely operate as if they are. Once completed, the code can be put into production with little more than a stamp of approval from an executive – and without formal review.

Many founders and even engineers of Web3 startups often do not have a good understanding of the security or potential risks in their systems, including code risks, oracle risks, operational risks, and compliance risks. They tend to believe that as long as the code is well written, these problems will not exist. In reality, however, security issues are not the same as code quality.

Our experience at CertiK is that many customers’ engineers are reluctant to engage with security researchers because they view security findings as insignificant or as challenges to their design and implementation. This resistance or neglect often leads to security issues going unnoticed or not resolved in a timely manner.

Furthermore, most computer science curricula do not include extensive training in secure development, and few engineers have hands-on experience with adversarial thinking or attack modeling. Even within companies, healthy coding practices are often inconsistently enforced. This creates a dangerous situation where engineers have control over systems that handle customer funds and private data, but without the necessary training to prevent disaster.

Maintaining accountability with essential infrastructure

Very high demands are placed on other departments within start-up companies. For example, finance officers prepare for audits and legal teams face compliance reviews. However, developers often operate in an accountability vacuum. This must change if companies want to succeed in the long term.

To achieve this, startups need to normalize many best practices, such as third-party audits before product launches, using secure coding tools, and implementing security training for all engineers, regardless of their specialties. It is also essential to implement protocols such as access control and key management with version control, without any point of failure and distributed code ownership, so that no system is dependent on the unchecked authority of one developer.

It’s true that implementing these procedures can result in significant overhead costs, but they are insurance policies for the future success of a start-up business, and therefore worth the money. They reduce the chance of catastrophic breaches that can sink a company faster than a rapid market decline.

Related: 4 Reasons Why You Need Developers with Cybersecurity Skills on All Tech Teams

Changing the trajectory of startup successes and failures

Unfortunately, the startup world is already sowing billion-dollar failures. The apps, protocols and platforms built today will form the backbone of tomorrow’s digital infrastructure. If the foundation is currently insecure, eventual collapse will be inevitable.

Today’s startup founders face a crucial choice: continue to view security as a distraction from growth, or recognize it as a prerequisite for survival. This last path is about maturity, resilience, leadership and long-term sustainability. Just as financial officers and legal advisors are expected to maintain standards, developers should be held to the same level of accountability.

The next generation of startups will either build companies that last, or become the cautionary tales of tomorrow. The difference depends on whether leaders are willing to demand security today – before it is too late.

Bill Gates once said, “The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will increase efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will increase inefficiency.”

Startup founders rarely think of their companies as inefficient, due to the many tasks they have to perform simultaneously and the need to keep up with rapid technology trends, but their engineering culture often is. While such founders focus on things like rapid iteration and launching minimum viable products (MVP), they often overlook the fundamentals of secure development.

This is why the real cybersecurity threat startups face isn’t hostile foreign actors or futuristic artificial intelligence exploits; it’s the culture of prioritizing speed that quietly reduces security effectiveness until one untested feature, dependency, or access control flaw causes everything to collapse.