Cybersecurity Engineering Services

What cybersecurity engineering means for software teams

Cybersecurity engineering is the practice of designing, building and testing software so that it resists attack. For most companies, the biggest risks are not exotic: vulnerable dependencies, broken access control, leaked secrets, misconfigured cloud storage and weak authentication. These are engineering problems, and they are fixed by engineers who understand both security and how software is actually built.

We work with product and IT teams to secure web apps, mobile apps, APIs and cloud environments — through testing, code review, architecture guidance and hands-on fixes. Because we also build software, our recommendations come with working solutions, not just a list of findings.

Signs you need help

• An enterprise customer sent a security questionnaire you cannot answer confidently
• You are preparing for SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA or PCI DSS
• A penetration test has never been run on your product
• Dependencies and frameworks are several versions behind
• Secrets, keys or passwords live in code or shared documents
• Nobody owns security in the development process

Our cybersecurity services

Common vulnerabilities we find and fix

How a penetration test works

1. ScopingWeek 1

   Agree targets, test accounts, rules of engagement and testing windows in writing.

2. Testing1–3 weeks

   Automated scanning plus manual testing of business logic, access control and APIs.

3. Reporting3–5 days

   Findings rated by severity with evidence, impact and step-by-step fixes, plus an executive summary.

4. Fix & retestAs agreed

   We can fix the issues for you, then retest and issue an updated report.

Compliance support

Frameworks such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA and PCI DSS all expect secure development practices, access control, logging and regular testing. We implement and document the technical controls auditors look for and work alongside your compliance platform (for example Vanta or Drata) and your auditor. We do not issue certifications ourselves.

Security built into every sprint

• Design — threat modelling for new features that handle sensitive data or money.
• Build — secure coding standards, peer review and pre-commit secret scanning.
• Test — SAST, dependency and container scanning on every pull request; DAST on staging.
• Release — infrastructure as code reviewed for misconfigurations before deployment.
• Operate — logging, alerting and a patching cadence for dependencies.

Cost

Typical ranges to help you plan. Your written estimate comes after a free discovery call.

Where to start if security has been neglected

If your product has grown quickly without much attention to security, the list of possible work can feel overwhelming. A sensible order is to fix the things attackers exploit most often first. Start with identity: enforce multi-factor authentication for every admin, developer and cloud account, remove shared logins and review who has access to production. Next, patch: update frameworks and libraries with known vulnerabilities and set up automated dependency alerts.

Then look for exposed secrets and data: API keys in repositories, public storage buckets and database backups in the wrong place. After that, test the application itself with a penetration test focused on access control and authentication, and fix what it finds. Finally, make it sustainable — security checks in CI/CD, logging and alerting, and a simple process for handling vulnerability reports. This sequence removes most real-world risk within weeks rather than months.

A security roadmap by company stage

Security needs change as a product grows. A ten-person startup and a company selling to hospitals face different expectations, and spending money on the wrong controls too early is as wasteful as ignoring security altogether. The table below is a practical rule of thumb for where to focus first.

Rule of thumb only — your customers, data and regulations decide the real priorities.

Reference controls for a typical web application

Most of the security incidents we see in web and mobile products come from a short list of gaps rather than exotic attacks. These are the controls we expect to find — or put in place — in any application handling customer data:

• Authentication through a proven provider, with multi-factor authentication for admins and optional MFA for users
• Authorisation checked on the server for every request, never only hidden in the user interface
• Secrets kept in a vault or managed secret store, rotated and never committed to source control
• Encryption in transit everywhere and at rest for databases, backups and file storage
• Dependency and container image scanning in the CI pipeline, with a process to patch critical issues quickly
• Centralised, tamper-resistant logs for logins, permission changes and access to sensitive records
• Rate limiting and bot protection on login, signup, password reset and public APIs
• Least-privilege cloud accounts, separate production and non-production environments, and no shared admin logins

How a security engagement typically runs

1. Scoping callWeek 1

   We learn what the system does, what data it holds, who uses it and what your customers or regulators expect.

2. AssessmentWeeks 1–3

   Architecture and code review, cloud configuration review and, where agreed, a penetration test against a staging environment.

3. Prioritised reportWeek 3–4

   Findings ranked by real-world risk, each with a clear explanation and a recommended fix — written for engineers and managers alike.

4. RemediationWeeks 4–10

   We fix issues alongside your team or hand over detailed guidance, then verify each fix.

5. Ongoing hardeningOngoing

   Security checks become part of every sprint, with periodic re-testing as the product changes.

Common mistakes that create risk

• Treating a penetration test as a certificate. A test shows weaknesses at one point in time; it does not prove the system is secure next month.
• Relying on the front end to hide data. If the API returns it, an attacker can read it — permissions must be enforced on the server.
• Leaving old environments running. Forgotten staging servers and test databases with real data are frequent entry points.
• Sharing admin accounts. Shared logins make it impossible to know who did what and hard to remove access when people leave.
• Skipping restore tests. Backups that have never been restored are a hope, not a plan — especially against ransomware.

Choosing a security partner

Ask any security partner — including us — to show a sample report, explain how they decide severity, and describe what happens after findings are delivered. A long list of automated scanner output is not an assessment. Good partners explain risk in business terms, help fix what they find and are clear about what they do not do: we, for example, prepare you for audits but are not an auditor, and we do not run a 24/7 security operations centre.

Explore the specialist services in this area: application security, identity and access management and penetration testing.

Answering customer security questionnaires

For B2B companies, the first serious security pressure usually arrives as a spreadsheet from a prospective customer with a hundred or more questions. Answering them well is a sales skill as much as a technical one. Vague or inconsistent answers slow deals; honest, specific answers backed by documentation speed them up.

We help teams build a reusable answer library covering access control, encryption, logging, backups, incident response, vendor management and secure development. Where a control is missing, we recommend fixing it rather than wording around it — and where a gap is acceptable for your stage, we help you describe the compensating controls truthfully.

• A short security overview document you can share under NDA
• An architecture diagram showing data flows and hosting
• Policies for access, incident response, backups and change management
• Evidence such as recent test summaries and dependency-scan reports

Preparing for an incident before it happens

No system is perfectly secure, so the quality of your response matters as much as your defences. A simple, rehearsed plan turns a stressful event into a managed one.

1. Detect

   Alerts on suspicious logins, permission changes, unusual data exports and error spikes.

2. Contain

   Pre-agreed steps to revoke sessions, rotate keys and isolate affected services.

3. Investigate

   Preserved logs and a clear owner for establishing what happened and what data was affected.

4. Communicate

   Templates and decision makers for customer, partner and regulatory notifications, reviewed with legal counsel.

5. Learn

   A blameless review that turns the incident into concrete improvements.

A one-hour tabletop exercise once or twice a year — walking through a realistic scenario with engineering, support and leadership — is one of the cheapest and most effective security investments a growing company can make.

Why work with us on security

We are software engineers first, so we fix what we find and understand the trade-offs your team faces. Security work connects naturally with our QA and testing and cloud and DevOps services.

Explore more in Software Development Services.