Description

A focused course, tailored for you

The Merchant-Platform Security Engineer Playbook

Run the production security work a multi-tenant commerce platform actually needs, from token-scope reviews to merchant-store incident response.

The security engineering work on a hosted commerce platform looks nothing like the SaaS playbooks public security blogs publish. Token scopes, webhook signing, Partner app boundaries, merchant-tier disclosure, and storefront-API abuse all sit in surfaces that are platform-specific.

$199 one-time

Tailored to your situation. Access within 24 hours. 30-day money-back.

Includes a hand-built implementation playbook delivered alongside course access, generated for your specific situation.

Why this course

A Senior Security Engineer on a commerce platform is doing three jobs at once. The first is platform-tier work: keeping the storefront API, checkout token paths, and webhook signing surface secure under the load of hundreds of thousands of merchant stores. The second is Partner-tier work: reviewing OAuth scopes that third-party apps request, catching scope creep before it ships, and running the incident playbook when a Partner app turns out to be the source of a merchant breach. The third is merchant-tier work: handling the disclosure pattern when a specific store was the vector, coaching merchants through what to tell their customers, and feeding the lesson back into the platform controls. None of this lives in the standard cloud security curriculum. The work is built one incident at a time, and the institutional memory walks out the door when engineers rotate. This course captures the playbooks that experienced platform security engineers carry in their heads, written down with the templates and the implementation steps.

What you walk away with

Ship a structured token-scope review process for every new Partner app that catches over-broad scope requests before publication.
Run the Partner-app incident playbook end to end when a third-party vendor is the source of a merchant breach.
Operate webhook signature verification at platform scale, including the rotation and revocation pattern when a Partner secret leaks.
Disclose to affected merchants in a pattern that protects the platform, supports the merchant, and feeds back into platform controls.
Detect storefront-API abuse and fraudulent checkout patterns at the platform tier even when they surface at one merchant store.

The 12 modules

Module 1. Token-Scope Review for Partner Apps

How to build a structured OAuth scope review pipeline that fires on every new Partner app submission and on every scope expansion request from an existing app. Covers what makes a scope request defensible, what scope combinations are red flags on a commerce platform specifically, how to require a written justification per scope, and how to log the approver chain so the review trail survives a year-out audit question. Includes the scope-review template and a worked example of a denial.

Module 2. The App Marketplace Review Pipeline

Hardening the end-to-end app review pipeline so security review is not a single bottleneck engineer. Covers the automated static checks worth running, what manual review must still cover, how to split first-pass review from senior review, and the escalation pattern when an app is borderline. Includes the review checklist, the automation hook, and the criteria for fast-tracking versus full review.

Module 3. Webhook Signature Verification at Platform Scale

Running webhook signing across tens of thousands of Partner endpoints. Covers the signing algorithm trade-offs, the secret rotation pattern, the revocation pattern when a Partner secret leaks, how to handle Partner endpoints that fail signature verification without breaking legitimate apps, and how to instrument signature failures so a real attack surfaces without drowning in noise. Includes the rotation runbook and the failure-rate alert thresholds.

Module 4. Storefront API Rate-Limit Abuse Detection

Storefront API abuse looks different from a normal API attack because the same patterns are legitimate at high volume during a flash sale. Covers the baseline-per-merchant approach to detection, the bot signal that distinguishes scraping from a real customer surge, how to throttle a specific abusive client without affecting the merchant's real traffic, and how to feed the detection back into platform-tier rules. Includes the detection query patterns and the throttle runbook.

Module 5. Shop Pay Tokenisation Boundary Tests

The payment tokenisation boundary on a commerce platform is one of the highest-stakes surfaces. Covers how to test the boundary between merchant-visible data and tokenised payment data, the specific token flows that need PCI scope analysis, how to verify that a Partner app cannot reach tokenised data through any side channel, and the audit pattern that proves boundary integrity to a payment auditor. Includes the boundary test matrix and the auditor-facing evidence pack.

Module 6. Fraudulent Checkout Pattern Detection

Fraudulent checkouts surface at one merchant store but the underlying attack pattern usually targets the platform. Covers card-testing patterns, BIN-attack signals, the cluster analysis that links related fraudulent checkouts across merchants, how to share the signal with affected merchants without leaking other merchants' data, and the disposition pattern for the fraud team. Includes the cluster query and the merchant notification template.

Module 7. Partner-App Incident Playbook

When a Partner app turns out to be the source of a merchant breach, the response is structurally different from a platform-tier incident. Covers the first-hour decisions, how to contain the Partner app without breaking every merchant that uses it legitimately, the legal posture for the Partner relationship, the communication pattern with affected merchants, and the post-incident review that feeds back into the app review pipeline. Includes the incident decision tree and the Partner-revocation runbook.

Module 8. Merchant-Tier Disclosure Pattern

Disclosing to a merchant whose store was the vector is a different conversation from disclosing to an end consumer. Covers how to brief the merchant on what happened, what they need to tell their customers, what evidence to share and what to keep platform-internal, the legal posture under merchant agreement terms, and the regulator-facing notification path. Includes the merchant disclosure template, the regulator notification checklist, and the post-disclosure coaching script.

Module 9. OAuth Grant Audit and Anomaly Detection

Stale OAuth grants are a permanent attack surface on a multi-tenant platform. Covers the audit pattern for grants that have not been used in 90+ days, the anomaly detection for grants that suddenly exercise scopes they never used before, the revocation runbook when a Partner has been compromised, and the merchant-facing communication pattern around grant revocation. Includes the stale-grant query, the anomaly detection rules, and the bulk-revocation runbook.

Module 10. Customer PII Boundary Enforcement

Customer PII on a commerce platform sits in a boundary that has to hold against the Partner app surface, the merchant operator surface, and the platform-internal surface. Covers the scope-level enforcement (which scopes can read which PII fields), the audit pattern for who actually read what, the redaction pattern for support tooling, and the legal posture under GDPR and CCPA when a Partner app reads PII it should not have. Includes the PII access matrix and the support-tool redaction config.

Module 11. Platform Tabletop Exercises for Multi-Tenant Incidents

Tabletop exercises on a commerce platform have to cover scenarios that single-tenant SaaS shops never run. Covers the scenario set that matters (Partner app compromise, single-merchant storefront breach, payment token surface compromise, mass scope-anomaly event), how to run the tabletop with security, platform engineering, Partner team, merchant support, and legal in the room, and how to capture the gaps as ticketed work. Includes four full scenario packs and the after-action template.

Module 12. Building the Platform Security Engineering Knowledge Base

The hardest part of platform security engineering is keeping institutional memory when engineers rotate. Covers the playbook structure that survives team turnover, how to write runbooks that the on-call engineer can actually execute at 3am, the review cadence that keeps playbooks current, and the onboarding pattern that gets a new senior engineer to operational independence in eight weeks. Includes the playbook template, the runbook template, and the eight-week onboarding plan.

How this addresses your situation

Specific modules that map to what you said you are dealing with.

Module 1 fires the moment a Partner app submits its initial scope request. The review template runs before the app reaches publication.

Module 7 fires when a merchant escalation traces back to a Partner app vendor as the source. The decision tree runs in the first hour of the incident.

Module 8 fires when the platform has confirmed which merchants were affected and the disclosure briefings need to start. The merchant template runs per affected store.

Module 11 fires quarterly when the platform runs its tabletop exercise cycle. The scenario packs run with the cross-functional room.

What you get with this course

Twelve written modules in the Art of Service learning environment, each with the artefact templates and worked examples named in the module summary.
The hand-built implementation playbook tailored to a platform security engineering function, delivered alongside course access.
Downloadable templates for token-scope review, Partner-app incident response, merchant disclosure, OAuth grant audit, PII access matrix, tabletop scenarios, and the eight-week onboarding plan.
Thirty-day money-back if the playbook does not match the work.

What you will have in hand by Day 1, Week 1, Month 1

Within 24 hours your account in the learning environment is provisioned and the tailored implementation playbook is delivered alongside it.

Modules 1 through 4 cover the platform-tier surfaces and can be executed in the first week.

Modules 5 through 8 cover the Partner-tier and merchant-tier surfaces and typically need two to three weeks of operational integration.

Modules 9 through 12 cover the longer-running platform-wide work and run on a quarterly cadence.

Before and after

Before

The token-scope review is run by whoever has time. The Partner-app incident playbook lives in one engineer's head. Merchant disclosure briefings are written from scratch every time. Tabletop exercises focus on scenarios that do not match the platform's real attack surface. Institutional memory walks out when an engineer rotates.

After

Every new Partner app runs through a structured scope review with a logged approver chain. The Partner-app incident playbook is documented end to end with a decision tree the on-call engineer can execute. Merchant disclosures use a tested template that protects platform, merchant, and customer. Tabletops run platform-specific scenarios quarterly. Onboarding a new senior engineer to operational independence takes eight weeks instead of six months.

What happens if you do not address this

Token-scope creep ships into production because nobody had time to review. A Partner app turns out to be the source of a merchant breach and the first-hour decisions are improvised. Merchant disclosure is written from scratch under time pressure and creates more legal exposure than it resolves. An engineer rotates and the playbooks they carried in their head leave with them. The next platform-tier incident exposes the same gaps the last one did.

Who it is for

Senior or staff security engineers working production security on a hosted commerce platform, marketplace, or other multi-tenant SaaS where third-party apps and end-merchant stores both have security boundaries to maintain. The course assumes you can read code, understand OAuth and webhook signing primitives, and have run at least one incident before. It does not teach you what a JWT is. It teaches you how to run the token-scope review pipeline for an app marketplace at scale, and how to disclose to a merchant whose store was the vector.

Who this is NOT for. Not for security engineers at a single-tenant enterprise SaaS where there are no third-party apps and no end-merchant boundary. Not for application security engineers who only review code and do not run incident response. Not for security analysts who do not write code or read API logs directly.

How it arrives

Text-based course in the Art of Service learning environment, plus downloadable templates and worked examples for every module, plus the hand-built implementation playbook delivered alongside course access.

Time investment. Around twelve to sixteen hours of focused reading and template work to complete the course. The implementation work runs alongside normal operational duties and typically reaches steady state within a quarter.

Why $199 is the right number

Public commerce-platform security blogs cover the headline incidents but not the structured playbooks that prevent them. General cloud security certifications cover the cloud control plane but not the Partner-app or merchant-tier surface. Internal institutional memory works until the engineer carrying it rotates. This course writes the platform-specific playbooks down in a form a new senior engineer can pick up and run.

FAQ

Is this a generic application security course?

No. It assumes you already understand OAuth, webhook signing, and incident response. It teaches the platform-specific work that sits on top of those primitives.

Will this work for a marketplace platform that is not a commerce platform?

The Partner-app and end-customer-account modules transfer directly. The Shop Pay tokenisation and fraudulent checkout modules are commerce-specific and will be reference reading rather than operational for a non-commerce marketplace.

Does the implementation playbook get tailored to my specific platform?

Yes. The playbook is hand-built per buyer and delivered alongside course access. It reflects your platform's specific Partner surface, payment posture, and merchant base.

What if it does not match the work I am doing?

Thirty-day money-back, no questions asked.

30-day money-back guarantee. If after a week of working through the materials this is not what you needed, reply to the receipt email and a full refund is processed. No questions, no forms.

Within 24 hours your account in the learning environment is provisioned and the tailored implementation playbook is delivered alongside it.