Kolkata, India – June 2025: With a developer workforce surpassing 5.8 million, India is swiftly positioning itself as the world’s largest hub for software engineering. Each year, a surge of new coders emerges from universities, online platforms, and startup ecosystems, fuelling innovation across sectors.
Yet amid this rapid expansion, a pressing concern is emerging:
Are India’s developers being taught how to code securely?
If the latest data is any indication, the answer appears to be — not yet.
The Real Cost of Insecure Code
The IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report 2024 revealed that the global average cost of a data breach climbed to an all-time high of $4.45 million. The most frequent cause? Compromised credentials, responsible for 16% of all breaches.
Perhaps even more alarming is the fact that breaches involving credential misuse took an average of 327 days to detect and contain — the longest of any breach category.
Similarly, the Verizon 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report found that 74% of breaches involved human error — misconfigurations, mistakes, or credential mishandling. Among these, improperly stored secrets like API keys and database passwords—often overlooked by developers—are an increasingly common, yet underreported, threat.
“The developer community is growing faster than its security literacy,” says Sawan, CEO and Co-founder of Keyshade.
“We’re seeing brilliant young coders who can build an entire app in a weekend but still don’t know the risk of putting secrets in a .env file or accidentally committing credentials to GitHub.”
Gaps in Developer Education
In India, the journey of a young developer typically begins in college classrooms, YouTube tutorials, or coding bootcamps. These paths often emphasize project delivery and speed over secure development practices.
As a result, sensitive information like API keys, access tokens, and database credentials is commonly passed around in plain text, stored in unprotected files, or exposed in code repositories. Team members share secrets over Slack, demo them in Zoom calls, or forget to scrub them before pushing to GitHub.
“Secrets management isn’t just a DevOps problem – it’s a developer responsibility. And we’re not being taught that early enough,” says Rajdip Bhattacharya, CTO and Co-Founder of Keyshade.
A Developer-Centric Security Solution
This is precisely the challenge Keyshade sets out to solve — with a tool built for developers, by developers. Keyshade is a lightweight, intuitive secrets and configuration management solution that eliminates the risks of .env files and hardcoded credentials.
It securely encrypts, stores, and injects secrets into development environments, without the overhead of traditional enterprise security tools.
“We wanted something secure that wouldn’t slow down our workflows. If it takes 10 steps to secure a secret, developers will skip 9,” say the founders.
In an era of remote work, open-source collaboration, and microservice-based architecture, secure practices can no longer be an afterthought. Tools like Keyshade are becoming a baseline requirement for modern development workflows.
Building a Secure Developer Ecosystem
India’s place in the global tech arena is undisputed. But to safeguard its digital infrastructure, the country must now take the next step: embedding secure coding practices into its growing developer ecosystem.
Here’s how the industry can lead the way:
- Integrate security into the curriculum — from engineering programs to coding bootcamps.
- Elevate secrets management as a fundamental practice in software hygiene.
- Invest in tools that make security a seamless part of everyday development.
The risk is not theoretical. One leaked API key can compromise user data, derail a product launch, or expose an entire business to legal and financial fallout.
“We don’t just need more devs. We need secure devs,” says Sawan.
About Keyshade
Keyshade is a plug-and-play secrets and configuration management platform tailored for developers. It helps secure sensitive credentials — like API keys and environment variables — from day one, without the complexity of legacy enterprise systems. Founded by two Indian engineering students, Keyshade is built to make secure development second nature.
