The challenge
An out-of-date component had been exploited on a staging server. Nobody was sure what else was running, who still had admin access, or whether the backups had ever been restored successfully.
The strategy
We started with an inventory, because you cannot secure what you have not listed. Everything else was prioritised by actual exposure rather than by scanner severity.
The solution
A full audit with a ranked report, access and permissions review, dependency patching, server and application hardening, tested backup restoration, and ongoing uptime and malware monitoring.
The outcome
Access is now limited to people who need it, patching is scheduled rather than reactive, and the backups have been restored under test rather than assumed to work.
