Getting Started with SecureNow and Next.js — Automatic Security Monitoring in Under 2 Minutes

Next.js makes building full-stack web applications easy. But once your app is live — handling user logins, processing payments, serving API routes — you need to know what is actually happening inside it. Not just how fast a page renders, but who is requesting it, whether those requests look legitimate, and what they are trying to do.

SecureNow plugs directly into Next.js's built-in instrumentation hook to capture every server-side request as an OpenTelemetry trace. Those traces feed into a security-focused analysis engine that detects injection attacks, credential stuffing, API abuse, and traffic anomalies — all without a WAF, a proxy, or any changes to your route handlers.

This guide covers the full flow: installing the package, logging in through the CLI, creating an app on the free trial, enabling instrumentation, and confirming everything works.

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18+
• A Next.js 13.4+ project (App Router or Pages Router)
• A terminal and a browser

No account yet? The CLI handles signup for you.

Step 1: Install SecureNow

npm install securenow

During installation, the postinstall script detects your Next.js project and offers to create the instrumentation.ts file automatically:

? Create instrumentation.ts for Next.js? (Y/n) Y
✔ Created instrumentation.ts

If you answered Y, your instrumentation file is already in place — skip ahead to Step 4. If you answered n or the prompt didn't appear, the manual setup in Step 5 covers you.

Step 2: Log In via the CLI

Authenticate with SecureNow from the terminal:

npx securenow login

Your default browser opens the SecureNow login page at app.securenow.ai. Sign up or log in, and the CLI receives a token automatically. It is stored at ~/.securenow/credentials.json.

Headless / CI alternative: Generate a token from Dashboard → Settings → CLI Token, then:

npx securenow login --token YOUR_TOKEN

Confirm you are authenticated:

npx securenow whoami

Step 3: Create an Application (Free Trial)

Create a named application that will collect your traces:

npx securenow apps create my-nextjs-app

When prompted to select a ClickHouse instance, choose Free Trial. This gives you a fully managed OTLP endpoint at https://freetrial.securenow.ai:4318 with no credit card and no time pressure.

The CLI prints the credentials you need:

✔ Application created

  SECURENOW_APPID=b9c8d7e6-f5a4-3210-9876-543210fedcba
  SECURENOW_INSTANCE=https://freetrial.securenow.ai:4318

Add these to your .env.local file.

Set it as the default app for CLI commands:

npx securenow config set defaultApp b9c8d7e6-f5a4-3210-9876-543210fedcba

Step 4: Configure Environment Variables

Create a .env.local file in your project root (Next.js loads this automatically and excludes it from Git):

SECURENOW_APPID=b9c8d7e6-f5a4-3210-9876-543210fedcba
SECURENOW_INSTANCE=https://freetrial.securenow.ai:4318

Optional extras:

SECURENOW_LOGGING_ENABLED=1
SECURENOW_CAPTURE_BODY=1

SECURENOW_LOGGING_ENABLED=1 forwards server-side console output as OTel logs alongside your traces. SECURENOW_CAPTURE_BODY=1 attaches request bodies to trace spans (with automatic redaction of passwords, tokens, and card numbers).

Step 5: Set Up Instrumentation

If the automatic installer already created instrumentation.ts in Step 1, you can skip this step entirely. Otherwise, pick one of these methods:

Option A: CLI Scaffold

npx securenow init

This creates instrumentation.ts (or .js if your project is JavaScript-only) and a .env.local template.

Option B: Manual File

Create instrumentation.ts at the root of your project (same level as next.config.js):

import { registerSecureNow } from 'securenow/nextjs';

export function register() {
  registerSecureNow();
}

That is the entire file. Next.js calls the register() export automatically when the server starts.

Next.js 14 Only: Enable the Instrumentation Hook

If you are on Next.js 14, add this to your next.config.js:

module.exports = {
  experimental: {
    instrumentationHook: true
  }
};

Next.js 15+ has instrumentation hooks enabled by default — no config change needed.

Step 6: Run and Verify

Start the dev server:

npm run dev

Look for the confirmation line in your terminal output:

[securenow] ✅ OpenTelemetry started for Next.js

Navigate to a couple of pages in your browser to generate traces, then check from the terminal:

npx securenow status

Your app should show as protected. Browse traces directly:

npx securenow traces

Or open app.securenow.ai to explore the full dashboard — traces, logs, security issues, analytics, and more.

Bonus: Handy CLI Commands

Deploying to Production

Vercel

Add your environment variables in the Vercel dashboard:

1. Go to Project Settings → Environment Variables
2. Add SECURENOW_APPID and SECURENOW_INSTANCE
3. Optionally add SECURENOW_LOGGING_ENABLED=1
4. Redeploy

SecureNow detects the Vercel runtime automatically and uses @vercel/otel for optimized trace export.

Docker / Self-Hosted

FROM node:20-alpine
WORKDIR /app
COPY package*.json ./
RUN npm install
COPY . .
RUN npm run build
ENV SECURENOW_APPID=my-nextjs-app
ENV SECURENOW_INSTANCE=https://freetrial.securenow.ai:4318
ENV SECURENOW_LOGGING_ENABLED=1
ENV NODE_ENV=production
EXPOSE 3000
CMD ["npm", "start"]

Or pass environment variables through docker-compose.yml:

services:
  nextjs-app:
    build: .
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
    environment:
      - SECURENOW_APPID=my-nextjs-app
      - SECURENOW_INSTANCE=https://freetrial.securenow.ai:4318
      - SECURENOW_LOGGING_ENABLED=1

PM2

// ecosystem.config.js
module.exports = {
  apps: [{
    name: 'my-nextjs-app',
    script: 'node_modules/.bin/next',
    args: 'start',
    env: {
      SECURENOW_APPID: 'my-nextjs-app',
      SECURENOW_INSTANCE: 'https://freetrial.securenow.ai:4318',
      SECURENOW_LOGGING_ENABLED: '1',
      NODE_ENV: 'production',
    }
  }]
};

What Gets Monitored Automatically

With instrumentation enabled, SecureNow captures and analyzes:

• API Routes — every handler in app/api/ or pages/api/
• Server Components — data fetching, rendering, and streaming
• Server-Side Rendering — getServerSideProps, generateMetadata, and dynamic renders
• Middleware — Next.js edge and node middleware execution
• Database Queries — Prisma, Drizzle, pg, mysql2, mongoose, and more via auto-instrumentation
• External HTTP Calls — fetch, axios, and other outbound requests
• Authentication Events — login attempts, session checks, authorization failures

On the security side, SecureNow watches for:

• SQL injection and NoSQL injection patterns
• Cross-site scripting (XSS) payloads in parameters and bodies
• Credential stuffing and brute-force authentication attacks
• API abuse — scraping, enumeration, rate-limit evasion
• Anomalous traffic patterns flagged by AI analysis
• Unexpected outbound connections (supply-chain signals)

Advanced: Request Body Capture with Middleware

For deeper visibility into request payloads (useful during development and staging), you can add SecureNow's Next.js middleware:

// middleware.ts
export { default } from 'securenow/nextjs-middleware';

This pairs with SECURENOW_CAPTURE_BODY=1 in your environment to attach request bodies to spans. Sensitive fields like passwords, tokens, and credit card numbers are redacted automatically. Add custom fields to redact with:

SECURENOW_SENSITIVE_FIELDS=internal_token,session_key

Recap

If the auto-installer created instrumentation.ts for you, the whole process is under two minutes. Even the manual path takes less than five.

Next Steps

• Open the SecureNow dashboard to explore traces, logs, and detected issues
• Set up alert rules to get notified about security events
• Run npx securenow forensics to query your traffic in natural language
• Read the full Next.js guide for body capture, custom logging, Vercel-specific options, and more

Your Next.js app is now observable, protected, and ready for production.