The Security Gap in Template Built Apps

A marketing director builds a customer loyalty app on a popular low code platform. The interface looks polished. The launch goes smoothly. Customers sign up by the thousands, entering email addresses, birthdays, and payment methods into a system that nobody on the team has inspected at the code level. Six months later, a security researcher discovers that the app transmits customer data to a third party analytics service embedded in the template’s pre built components, and that the connection uses outdated encryption that any competent attacker can intercept from a coffee shop Wi Fi network.

That scenario is not hypothetical. It reflects a pattern that security auditors encounter repeatedly when they examine apps built on template and low code platforms. The tools themselves are not inherently flawed, and they serve genuine purposes for prototyping, internal workflows, and applications that handle only non sensitive data. However, when businesses deploy these platforms for customer facing products without understanding the low code app security implications, the gap between what the business assumes and what the code actually does can become dangerously wide.

The Template Boom and Its Security Blind Spot

Low code and no code adoption has accelerated to a scale that demands serious security attention. Gartner estimates that 70 percent of new applications will use low code or no code technologies by 2025. The market is projected to reach $37.39 billion in spending by the same year. Template platforms promise 90 percent reductions in development time, and for many use cases they deliver on that promise.

Speed, however, does not equal security. OWASP recognized this tension clearly enough to publish a dedicated Top 10 specifically for low code and no code security risks, separate from the traditional web and mobile vulnerability lists. That decision signals something important: template built apps create categories of vulnerabilities that do not exist in traditionally developed software. Account impersonation through shared identity contexts, authorization misuse from overly broad default permissions, data leakage through platform managed connections, and injection attacks targeting visual development interfaces all appear on that list.

Meanwhile, 42 percent of all company applications now result from shadow IT according to industry research. Many of those applications were built on template platforms by employees who excel at their business function but have no training in secure development practices. Nearly one in two cyberattacks stems from shadow IT, with remediation costs averaging more than 4.2 million dollars per incident. Low code app security has become a boardroom concern whether organizations realize it or not.

Where the Security Gaps Actually Hide

Template and low code platforms abstract away the code. That abstraction delivers convenience, but it also creates blind spots that compound as the application handles more sensitive data and serves more customers.

Dependency exposure represents the most pervasive risk. Every template app relies on a stack of pre selected libraries, SDKs, and frameworks that the platform vendor chose. The business building on that platform did not select these dependencies, likely cannot see their version numbers, and almost certainly does not monitor them for newly discovered vulnerabilities. NowSecure’s analysis of more than 525,000 mobile apps found that third party code accounts for roughly 60 percent of an average application’s codebase. Three quarters of apps demonstrated weaknesses traceable to third party SDKs. On average, a mobile application uses about 30 SDKs with up to 90 percent of code sourced from third parties. In a template built app, that percentage can be even higher because the platform itself generates additional code layers that the developer never authored.

Opaque configurations create the second major gap. Template platforms ship with default settings optimized for ease of use rather than security. API endpoints may accept broader request types than necessary. Authentication flows may store tokens in locations accessible to other apps on the device. Data connections may transmit information without certificate pinning. CSO Online reports that when non technical users create applications and expose them internally or externally, those applications can house sensitive organizational, customer, or regulated data with none of the vetting that a security conscious development process would provide.

Testing tool incompatibility compounds both problems. TechTarget research confirms that many traditional security testing tools, both static and dynamic analysis, do not integrate with low code environments. When a security team runs standard vulnerability scans against a template built app, the tools may not recognize or be able to analyze the platform generated code. The result is a false sense of coverage. The scan completes with a clean report while actual vulnerabilities sit unexamined in the layers the scanner could not reach.

Credential and secret management rounds out the core concern areas. Low code platforms frequently make it easy for builders to connect APIs, payment processors, and data services by entering credentials directly into the platform’s configuration interface. SecureFlag researchers found that low code platforms may not have the right capabilities to encrypt, store, and manage secrets safely. Hardcoded API keys and plaintext credentials represent a recurring finding in audits of template built applications. One security consultant recounted discovering a hardcoded API key in a low code app during a peer review, noting that a single toggle in the platform’s settings could have prevented what would otherwise require a week of incident response.

Real Incidents That Illustrate the Pattern

Security gaps in template and low code built apps are not theoretical. Published incidents and research findings demonstrate the pattern at scale.

Appknox scanned 38,912 mobile applications in 2025 and identified 346,874 total vulnerabilities, including 8,412 critical severity issues. That translates to roughly 8.9 vulnerabilities per app on average. While not all of these apps were built on template platforms, the vulnerability patterns that appear most frequently, insecure data storage, broken encryption, and exposed third party components, align precisely with the gaps that template and low code tools introduce.

Published research from Australian authorities in 2024 found that 47 percent of organizations reported at least one data breach involving third party network access, and that including third party vendors in your network pushes the breach probability from 41 percent to 60 percent. One ransomware attack in February 2024 compromised sensitive data through a third party connection, illustrating how a single misconfigured integration can jeopardize an entire organization’s data infrastructure.

Research into mental health apps painted an equally concerning picture. Oversecured scanned ten mental health applications with over 14.7 million collective downloads and uncovered 1,575 security vulnerabilities across those ten products alone. These apps handled therapy transcripts, mood logs, medication schedules, and information protected under HIPAA. Therapy records sell for 1,000 dollars or more per record on the dark web. The researchers noted that some apps parsed user supplied data without adequate validation, a vulnerability category that template built apps are particularly susceptible to because the builder may not have access to modify the parsing logic.

At the enterprise level, the consequences are equally measurable. Guardsquare commissioned research showing that 93 percent of organizations believed their mobile app protections were sufficient. Reality diverged sharply: 62 percent of those same organizations experienced at least one mobile app security incident in the past year, averaging nine incidents per organization annually. The average cost of a mobile app security breach reached 6.99 million dollars in 2025.

What a Code Audit Reveals in Template Built Apps

Professional security audits examine what actually runs inside an application, not what the builder intended or what the platform’s marketing materials promise. For template and low code built apps, audits routinely uncover findings that surprise the businesses that commissioned them.

Static analysis of the compiled application reveals the actual libraries and SDK versions embedded in the production build. Auditors compare these against known vulnerability databases to identify components with documented security flaws. In template apps, this step frequently surfaces dependencies that the builder never selected and may not know exist. The platform included them automatically, and they may carry vulnerabilities that the platform vendor has not yet patched.

Dynamic testing evaluates how the running application behaves under adversarial conditions. Auditors probe API endpoints to test whether they enforce proper authentication, transmit data with adequate encryption, and reject malformed requests. Template built apps commonly reveal overly permissive API configurations because the platform’s default settings prioritize universal compatibility over restrictive security. Payment endpoints, user profile updates, and data export functions all receive scrutiny during this phase.

Manual penetration testing by experienced engineers explores the application’s business logic layer. Automated tools excel at finding known patterns, but logic vulnerabilities, the kind where an attacker can manipulate a workflow to access another customer’s data or escalate privileges, require human judgment to identify. Template apps present a particular challenge here because the business logic often intertwines with platform generated logic in ways that create unexpected interaction patterns.

For organizations operating template built apps, the audit provides something irreplaceable: a factual picture of low code app security in their specific deployment. Not the platform’s general security posture, but the actual state of the actual application handling actual customer data. That picture determines whether targeted remediation can address the findings effectively or whether a more fundamental architectural change is warranted for long term protection.

Making Informed Decisions About Your Development Approach

These platforms occupy a legitimate place in the technology landscape. They accelerate prototyping significantly. They enable non technical teams to automate internal workflows without waiting for developer availability. They reduce costs for applications where the stakes of a security failure are low and the data involved is not sensitive.

Problems arise when organizations deploy these platforms beyond their security boundaries without recognizing they have crossed a threshold. The moment an application starts processing customer payments, storing health records, managing personal data subject to privacy regulations, or serving as the primary digital relationship channel with customers, the low code app security question becomes urgent.

Fixing vulnerabilities during the design phase costs approximately 80 dollars compared to 7,600 dollars after deployment, representing a 95 times multiplier. Organizations that invest in security audits before launch or early in an application’s lifecycle see dramatically better financial outcomes than those that discover vulnerabilities through an incident.

How Tepia Helps Businesses Navigate the Gap

Tepia works with businesses at every stage of this spectrum. Some clients come to us with a template built app that serves their customers today and want to understand what risks it carries. Others arrive knowing they need a custom build but want confirmation that the investment is justified. Both conversations start the same way: with an honest assessment of what exists and what the business actually needs.

Our engineers conduct thorough security evaluations of existing applications regardless of how the team originally built them. When we audit a template built app, we examine the compiled code, the embedded dependencies, the API configurations, the data transmission patterns, and the credential management practices. Clients receive a clear, prioritized report of findings along with our recommendation for whether targeted fixes, a partial rebuild, or a full custom development approach best serves their business and their customers.

When custom development is the right answer, we build applications where every line of code is authored, reviewed, and owned by our team. That ownership means we can trace every function, audit every dependency, and respond to every vulnerability disclosure with precise knowledge of its impact. Thirteen years of building mobile applications across retail, manufacturing, entertainment, and enterprise operations shaped our conviction that security is not a feature to add later. It is an engineering discipline that begins with the first architecture decision and continues through every update after launch.

Where to Start

Start by contacting us. We build apps that retain your customers with custom engineering backed by thirteen years of disciplined development and near perfect client feedback. Whether you need a security audit of an existing template built application or a custom build designed with low code app security risks eliminated from the foundation, you get a team that understands exactly where the gaps hide and how to close them.