We recently rolled out updated HTTP security headers for Comply. Following best practices with HTTP security headers can be a quick way to add an additional layer of security to a website, so we wanted to share our work here in hopes that others might find it helpful.

The landscape of front-end engineering has changed drastically in the last few years. In the past, front-end engineers were depended upon to translate design comps into functioning HTML, CSS and JavaScript. More recently, with the explosion of the JavaScript ecosystem, front-end engineers are now expected to work more broadly across the entire stack, and in some cases, have more of a traditional computer science background. So is there still a place for front-end engineers who still enjoy writing CSS?

Existential checks are when we have to detect whether or not a variable has a value - that is, checking to see if a variable exists. If the value is null, undefined or otherwise falsy, then it fails the check. This usually takes the form of an if-statement.

Let’s say you’ve created a SaaS application that lets customers keep track of their vendors. Things are going well and you’re adding many customers. One day, a curious customer starts messing around with the IDs in URLs and stumbles across a vendor they shouldn’t have access to. This is Very Bad™, especially if your customers are relying on your application to store sensitive information!

If you’ve been following along in this three-part series, perhaps you’ve started to pick up on a theme: We believe that intentional culture design is necessary for creating a center that holds on a distributed team. And a large part of that design work lies in establishing clear expectations around what work needs to be done, and how it should be done.

We're passionate about building a diverse team of talented people who accomplish great things together, regardless of where they are. We know that our ability to achieve our mission is contingent on ensuring our team performs at a high level and making Aptible the best environment to support that kind of team. We can’t control what’s happening outside of Aptible, but we can be certain that we have a greater chance at long-term success if our center holds. This means that the core of Aptible—our team and its culture—must be strong, through every phase of growth.

It was 2014, and our CEO (Chas) and CTO (Frank) had been working side-by-side in New York, NY on the beginnings of Aptible. They were ready to grow the business and found a talented Product Designer to join. The only challenge was that said Product Designer lived in Indianapolis, IN, and he wasn’t planning on moving any time soon. Could an early stage startup successfully get off the ground with hundreds of miles between its founding members?

Sydney Shea didn’t grow up dreaming of becoming a Product Designer — she didn’t even know Product Design was a possibility. It took traveling down many paths, including earning an Architecture degree in college, to learn the skills and discover the opportunities that helped her get to where she is today.

At Aptible, we’ve spent years thinking about how to run a high-performing remote team. Key to our ability to make important business decisions and promote collaboration as a team is something Skylar Anderson, Aptible’s VP of Design (and our first employee) describes as “having a culture of knowing when to make things permanent.”