Hey folks! Sloan, DEV Moderator and mascot. I'm back with another question submitted by a DEV community member. 🦥

For those unfamiliar with the series, this is another installment of Sloan's Inbox. You all send in your questions, I ask them on your behalf anonymously, and the community leaves comments to offer advice. Whether it's career development, office politics, industry trends, or improving technical skills, we cover all sorts of topics here. If you want to send in a question or talking point to be shared anonymously via Sloan, that'd be great; just scroll down to the bottom of the post for details on how.

Let's see what's up this week...

Today's question is:

Hey DEV Community!

I'm pretty new to development and something that I've heard come up a few times is the line "security is an afterthought" meaning that it's not necessarily something developers are incorporating early on during the design phase of an application. That's my understanding!

As I look to expand my skills and hone my focus, I've considered security as something that might be cool to get into. I just wonder does "security is an afterthought" mean that in a practical sense, a security professional is likely to be brought on later during the app development to solve some particular security problem? Is there generally refactoring involved to account for security?

Grateful for any advice, thanks! 🙂

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