Last updated: January 12, 2026
An honest security analysis of Vercel for developers considering it for their projects.
Vercel is enterprise-grade safe with SOC 2 Type II, automatic HTTPS, and DDoS protection. Main risks: preview deployments can expose staging data, and you must configure security headers manually in vercel.json. Built by the Next.js team with strong security defaults.
Vercel is built for production with enterprise security infrastructure. The main gotchas are preview deployment exposure and missing security headers. Add headers in vercel.json and enable Deployment Protection. For high-security needs, Enterprise WAF and advanced DDoS protection are available.
Understanding Vercel security in the context of broader industry trends and research.
of Lovable applications (170 out of 1,645) had exposed user data in the CVE-2025-48757 incident
Source: CVE-2025-48757 security advisory
average cost of a data breach in 2023
Source: IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report 2023
developers using vibe coding platforms like Lovable, Bolt, and Replit
Source: Combined platform statistics 2024-2025
“Vibe coding your way to a production codebase is clearly risky. Most of the work we do as software engineers involves evolving existing systems, where the quality and understandability of the underlying code is crucial.”
“The problem with AI-generated code isn't that it doesn't work - it's that it works just well enough to ship, but contains subtle security flaws that are hard to spot.”
Preview deployments are public by default - anyone with the URL can access them. Enable Deployment Protection in project settings to require authentication. Be careful not to expose staging data or preview-only environment variables.
Add a 'headers' array in vercel.json with your CSP, X-Frame-Options, HSTS, and other headers. Vercel doesn't add these by default. Example: {"headers": [{"source": "/(.*)", "headers": [{"key": "X-Frame-Options", "value": "DENY"}]}]}
Yes. Vercel is SOC 2 Type II compliant with enterprise options including WAF, advanced DDoS protection, and SAML SSO. Companies like Washington Post, Nintendo, and Tripadvisor use Vercel for production. Configure security headers and deployment protection.
Vercel encrypts env vars at rest and lets you scope them to Production/Preview/Development. Never prefix secrets with NEXT_PUBLIC_ - that makes them visible in client JavaScript. Use Edge Config or Vercel KV for runtime secrets that shouldn't be in env vars.
Don't guess - scan your app and know for certain. VAS checks for all the common security issues in Vercel applications.