Building Secure APIs: A Practical Pre-Launch Checklist

Before shipping any API to production, certain fundamentals cannot be skipped: clear authentication and authorization, validation of every user input, rate limiting, and error messages that don't leak sensitive details. Add to that prepared statements to prevent SQL injection, scoping writable fields (mass assignment), and logging error context on the server. Security is not a feature added later; it is part of the design from the first line.