Secure Web Performance

Budgets, not guesses

Performance should be scoped like any other requirement. Define budgets for LCP, INP and CLS. Treat regressions as bugs; track them next to security issues. The trick is to make fast and safe the default path, not a fragile afterthought.

Secure defaults that don’t slow you down

• Modern TLS (ECDHE + TLS 1.3), HSTS and OCSP stapling.
• Strict headers (CSP, X-CTO, F-A) with caching tuned for static assets.
• HTTP/2 or HTTP/3 with server push alternatives replaced by proper preload hints.

Delivery: do less, ship smarter

• Code-split and lazy-load non-critical modules; inline only the truly critical path.
• Use immutable asset URLs (hashes) + long-lived cache headers.
• Compress (Brotli/Gzip) and serve images in next-gen formats (AVIF/WebP) with responsive sizes.

Measure continuously

Synthetic + RUM. Track country/CDN edges, device classes and TLS handshakes. Correlate security header errors with perf drops - misconfigurations often show up as both.

Key takeaways

• Make performance and security first-class requirements.
• Strong headers and modern TLS can live with aggressive caching.
• Instrument. Regressions are bugs - fix them.