Your vendor just went out of business.
Can you access your code? Your infrastructure? Your documentation?
If the answer is no, you're about to have a very expensive problem.
I've watched businesses lose months of development, entire customer databases, and critical IP because their vendor disappeared and took everything with them.
The vendor's servers. The vendor's AWS account. The vendor's GitHub repo. All gone.
This isn't a hypothetical. It happens all the time.
Small agencies fold. Freelancers move on. Contractors get hit by buses. And if you don't own your assets, you're starting from zero.
Here's what most businesses don't have access to:
→ Source code repository — It's in the vendor's GitHub, not yours
→ Infrastructure accounts — AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure under their billing
→ Domain registrations — Registered under the vendor's account
→ API keys and credentials — Stored in the vendor's password manager
→ Documentation — Tribal knowledge that walked out the door
→ Database backups — On the vendor's servers with no export process
This is vendor lock-in by negligence. And it's a massive, unacknowledged risk.
Here's how to eliminate the single point of failure:
→ Code ownership from day one — Your GitHub organization, not theirs
→ Infrastructure in YOUR accounts — Your AWS, your keys, your control
→ Documentation as a deliverable — Architecture docs, deployment guides, runbooks
→ No proprietary lock-in — Open-source stacks, standard patterns, portable code
→ Regular code transfers — Weekly or bi-weekly pushes to your repo
At ScopeForged, we don't own your code. You do. From the first commit, everything lives in your GitHub organization. Your AWS account. Your domain registrar.
If we disappeared tomorrow, you'd have full access to everything. Zero disruption. Zero ransom situation.
Because the relationship should be based on value, not hostage-taking.
Do you own your code, or does your vendor? Have you checked?
#SoftwareDevelopment #VendorRisk #BusinessContinuity #TechOwnership #ClientProtection
→ scopeforged.com
Philip Rehberger Founder, ScopeForged scopeforged.com
