Challenge

A financial services company required a comprehensive security strategy to safeguard sensitive data and ensure regulatory compliance.

Their existing WordPress infrastructure lacked structured access controls and a secure deployment process, creating potential vulnerabilities.

The company operated a WordPress website with limited security protocols and controlled access management.

Multiple users had access to the production environment, and changes were often made directly on production without testing, increasing the risk of data breaches and site downtime.

Solution

84EM implemented a comprehensive security and maintenance framework built around the principle of least privilege and environment separation.

The solution established distinct staging and production environments with role-based access controls, ensuring all changes are tested before deployment.

We established a secure one-way deployment pipeline that allows content, plugins, and themes to flow seamlessly from staging to production, while limiting access to the production site to authorized personnel (specifically, select administrators only).

We also disabled the ability to install and edit themes and plugins, essentially making the production website a read-only environment.

Technical Implementation

• Authentication Hardening: Enforced strong password requirements and two-factor authentication across all user accounts to prevent unauthorized access.
• Access Control Architecture: Restricted administrator privileges to only two trusted users who can log in to the production site directly, and completely removed the ability to modify code on the production site from within the WordPress admin.
• Audit Logs: Extensive logging of all operations performed on the website, from who is logging in from where, and page edits to plugin updates.
• Login Alerts: Real-time notifications when anyone logs in, and separate alerts if an administrator logs in from a new IP address.
• Staging Environment Workflow: Limited staging site access to authors and editors for content creation and review, preventing unauthorized code changes.
• Automated Migration Pipeline: A configuration to selectively pull only content, plugin updates, or theme modifications, or everything, from staging to production on a controlled schedule.
• Continuous Maintenance Program: Established regular update cycles for WordPress core, plugins, and themes within the staging environment before production deployment.
• Change Management Protocol: All modifications are tested in staging and verified for functionality before being migrated to the live site.
• Uptime Monitoring: 24/7 monitoring at 1-minute intervals, with real-time Slack, Teams, and Email alerts to proactively respond to downtime.
• Cloudflare Business Plan: For a highly advanced firewall that blocks security threats and DDOS attacks before they can reach the site.
• Regular Malware Scans: To ensure no breaches have taken place.
• Regular Logs Review: To ensure that no unauthorized access or changes occur.
• Regular Backups: Daily off-site backups for disaster recovery.

Results

100% uptime for the last 12 months.

A security infrastructure that protects the client from the risk of breaches.

The staging-to-production workflow eliminates untested changes on the live site, preventing downtime and security vulnerabilities.

Ongoing maintenance ensures the platform remains current with security patches, while the controlled access model reduces exposure to insider threats and human error.