Developer-tool security — the product you sell IS the attack surface
If you sell dev tools, a single vulnerability in your product = potential breach at every customer. Your security posture needs to be above industry-baseline simply because your attack surface is everyone's production.
Top security risks
Token compromise at provider scope
Your customers install your tool with broad scopes. A leak of your signing key or your access tokens compromises every customer.
Malicious package published under your scope
If you publish libraries, a supply-chain attack on your publish tokens poisons every downstream consumer.
Customer code in your training data
If you train models on customer code, consent and residency are both heavily scrutinized.
Update pipeline compromised
SolarWinds-style: your auto-update mechanism becomes an attack vector.
Regulatory context
No industry-specific regulation, but expected to meet or exceed customer requirements — often SOC 2 + ISO 27001 + targeted pentest.
Checklist
- SLSA Level 3+ attestation on every build
- Signed release artifacts
- Short-lived publish tokens
- Customer code never used for training without explicit per-customer opt-in
- Public bug bounty with meaningful rewards
- Reproducible builds where feasible
- Customer-side opt-in for auto-update (not default)
Developer-tool buyers want to see your own security practices disclosed — blog posts about your internal security are high-trust signal.