Kolkata, India – June 2025: With more than 5.8 million software professionals, India is cementing its place as the world’s fastest-growing developer base. Every year, hundreds of thousands of coders join the workforce through colleges, bootcamps, and self-learning platforms, fueling innovation across the tech landscape.
But this momentum brings a critical challenge into focus:
Are these developers being trained to write secure code?
Based on recent findings, the answer is leaning toward no.
Breaches Stem from Oversights — Not Sophistication
The IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report 2024 shows the global average cost of a data breach has surged to $4.45 million, the highest figure to date. Credential compromise remains the most common entry point for attackers, accounting for 16% of incidents.
Worse still, these breaches — particularly those tied to misused credentials — take an average of 327 days to identify and resolve, more than any other threat type.
The Verizon 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report echoes this concern, reporting that 74% of breaches involved human errors like misconfigurations and mishandled credentials. A significant portion of these involve developers accidentally exposing secrets such as API keys and database logins.
“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.”
Security Still Missing from Developer Training
In India, most aspiring developers begin their journey in traditional engineering colleges or via fast-track bootcamps and video tutorials. While these paths focus on creating functional applications quickly, secure coding habits are often neglected.
The way developers handle sensitive credentials reflects this. Secrets are frequently shared in chat tools, stored as plain text, or checked into source control systems like Git — exposing projects to major vulnerabilities.
“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.
Designed by Developers, for Developer Security
Keyshade was born to bridge this very gap. It’s a developer-focused secrets and configuration management solution that removes the risks of .env files, hardcoded credentials, and insecure sharing methods.
By encrypting and securely injecting secrets into the development environment, Keyshade delivers strong security without adding complexity or slowing teams down.
“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.
As more developers work remotely, contribute to public repositories, and build distributed systems, adopting simple, secure practices from day one is no longer optional — it’s essential.
Shaping the Future: Secure Developers for a Secure India
India’s software boom is undeniable. But without embedding secure development principles into its foundation, the ecosystem remains at risk.
To address this, the industry must take bold, collective action:
Infuse security principles into academic and bootcamp curricula.
Treat secrets handling as core to software quality, not an afterthought.
Adopt developer-friendly tools that integrate security into daily workflows.
The fallout of a single credential leak can be catastrophic — from user data exposure and loss of trust to steep regulatory fines and reputational damage.
“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 tool created for developers. It safeguards sensitive data like API keys, tokens, and environment variables without burdening teams with complex enterprise systems. Founded by two Indian engineering students, Keyshade empowers coders to protect what they build from the start.