Dmitry Marinov, CTO of ANY.RUN and a specialist in building tools for security teams, shares his experience – including how to choose the right tools at the right time, avoid common implementation pitfalls, and apply a simple, startup-friendly approach to incident response and threat analysis.

Startups usually operate under limited budgets, tight deadlines, and small teams, so security isn’t the first priority. But ignoring cybersecurity doesn't make the threats go away. The challenge is figuring out how to build protection without slowing yourself down.

Avoidable mistakes that still cost you

It’s easy to assume that major security failures come from sophisticated attacks. But in reality, many breaches in startups happen because of basic and entirely preventable missteps during the implementation stage. According to Verizon’s 2023 Data Breach Investigations Report, 74% of breaches involved a human element, including misconfigurations, use of default credentials, or lack of access controls. Similar findings from Gartner and Radware suggest that up to 69% of cloud data breaches result from misconfiguration, and 99% of firewall breaches are caused by configuration mistakes, not flaws in the technology itself.

The most common failures stem from:

• Leaving default credentials and permissions intact
• Manual and inconsistent configuration leads to gaps and drift across environments
• Lack of clear security ownership
• Ignoring early integration

Startups should use Infrastructure as Code (IaC) to set up systems automatically using secure, pre-approved templates – it keeps things consistent and secure. Add policy-as-code tools to make sure your security rules are followed without relying on people to remember them. Build in security early by adding code checks (both static and dynamic) right into your development pipeline – that way, you can catch issues before they become real problems. And most importantly, make sure someone owns security from day one. Clear responsibility means fewer gaps, fewer delays, and much stronger protection as you grow.

What to do if the budget is tight

Another common constraint for most of the startups is a limited budget. Recent studies show that only about half of the companies have the budget necessary to mitigate cybersecurity risks. So if you're working with limited resources, focus on high-impact, low-cost tactics that give you the most coverage for the lowest costs:

• Open-source tools: mature solutions like OWASP ZAP, OSSEC/Wazuh, ClamAV, and Trivy offer enterprise-grade capabilities at no licensing costs
• Cloud-native security features are often included with cloud infrastructure at no additional cost
• Fundamental hygiene practices, including automated patch management, strong multi-factor authentication, strict password policies, and reliable backups, offer the highest risk reduction per dollar
• Community-driven threat intelligence: open, community-driven threat intel platforms help you stay alert to emerging threats with minimum expense

And it doesn’t stop there. Security isn’t static – it has to evolve with your startup. As your product, team, and customer base grow, so do your risks. That’s why it’s important to regularly assess your security stack based on actual exposure and operational needs.

This includes integrating automated threat intelligence feeds into your monitoring tools to gain richer, context-aware alerts. It’s also a good idea to regularly test security defences by running simulated cyberattacks – often called red team/blue team exercises, where one group tries to breach your system (red team), and another defends it (blue team). This practice helps check how well your tools and team respond in real situations. Additionally, staying updated on security advisories from the software vendors and tracking newly discovered vulnerabilities (known as CVEs, or Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) allows to quickly fix weaknesses before attackers exploit them. Even with a limited budget, adaptive measures and continuous reassessment can go a long way in maintaining your defence.

What you need now vs what you’ll need later

Not every startup needs enterprise-grade security from day one – but every startup needs something. The key is to focus on the right tools at the right time.

Early on, you're aiming for maximum impact with minimal complexity: tools that help you understand what’s going on, respond fast, and protect what matters most – your team, your code, and your customers. As your company scales, so should your security system – with more specialized tools and processes to match growing infrastructure and risk.

In the beginning, startups should adopt a layered approach, prioritising tools based on risk and maturity:

• Interactive sandbox or safebrowsing for dynamic malware analysis, phishing detection, and fast IOC (indicator of compromise) extraction
• Threat Intelligence for quick checks of hashes, domains, and files. It complements sandboxing and is a nice-to-have feature
• Endpoint detection and response for real-time monitoring and behavioural analytics on devices will enable early detection of threats
• Identity and access management for role-based access control and multifactor authentication will safeguard critical accounts and resources
• Cloud infrastructure security monitoring that helps detect misconfigurations, suspicious activity, and anomalies in your cloud environments
• Encrypted and automated backup systems are essential for defence against ransomware and data loss

As the organisation grows, you can concentrate on more strategic things:

• Vulnerability management – continuous scanning of codebases, containers, and infrastructure to identify and prioritise exploitable weaknesses
• Container and Kubernetes security – runtime protection, policy enforcement, and anomaly detection to secure your cloud-native environments as they move into production
• Security information and event management (SIEM) – centralised log collection, threat correlation, and incident alerting enable broader detection and faster response

Still, no matter the size of the business, interactive threat analysis (like sandboxing) is worth considering early. When integrated with threat intelligence and orchestration tools, it gives startups enterprise-level insights without the enterprise-level overhead.

Roadmap to introducing cybersecurity practices

For startups, cybersecurity isn’t something you can set in the beginning and then forget. It’s a roadmap that changes along with the growth and scaling of the business. And like any good roadmap, it should be aligned with the development stages.

A good approach is orienting your efforts by following established frameworks such as SOC 2, NIST CSF, and ISO 27001. These standards guide the creation of scalable, secure, and compliant practices. SOC 2 focuses on data security and privacy controls for service providers, NIST CSF offers a flexible approach to managing cybersecurity risks, and ISO 27001 defines requirements for systematic information security management. Aligning with these frameworks helps startups structure their security roadmap and grow confidently.

1. In the first 6 months, the focus should be on building a solid foundation. That means enabling multi-factor authentication, setting up reliable patch management, configuring secure identity and access controls, and ensuring backups are encrypted
2. From months 6 to 12, it’s time to start automating vulnerability management, centralising your logging and monitoring, and building out your incident response playbooks – so your team knows exactly what to do when something goes wrong
3. After the first year, shift toward governance and long-term resilience: formalise your security policies, start conducting regular penetration tests, and assess third-party risks in your ecosystem
4. And continuously, as your product and team evolve, embed security into your development lifecycle – adopting DevSecOps practices, nurturing internal security champions, and regularly reassessing risk based on real-world threats

Over the years, working closely with high-growth startups, I’ve learned that cybersecurity can’t be an afterthought or a checklist item. It must be woven into the fabric of how technology teams build, deploy, and operate software, without sacrificing speed or innovation.  This isn’t about piling on tools or complexity; it’s about building resilient, adaptive defences that empower teams rather than slow them down, so startups can confidently innovate and scale with security as a true enabler, not a barrier.

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