The Challenge
In January 2023, our host quarantined the company's files, taking the website and online assets offline. The initial assumption was a bandwidth issue. The real cause turned out to be a virus.
What I Did
- Initiated the response immediately with the host and led the internal investigation.
- Consulted a senior WordPress developer who diagnosed infected files with Wordfence, brought in a cloud-security consultant from my network to analyse the logs, and then worked through the logs myself.
- Traced the infection to its source: an Alexus mailer from a 2016 ticket portal that everyone had forgotten about.
Results & Impact
- Identified and isolated the virus, restoring the web assets.
- Advocated successfully for separating marketing and development environments into distinct cPanels.
- Convinced management to adopt stronger security practices, guarding against future incidents.
Marketing was not my only job that week, and the long-term security improvements outlasted the immediate fix.