Client Security and Administration

Client Security and Administration Project Summary

LEDC contacted me to re-assess their internal management and security. Working together we built an ecosystem that is both easier to manage and more secure overall.

A client contacted me to re-assess their internal management and security. Working together we built an ecosystem that is both easier to manage and more secure overall.

Understanding a general consulting contract and it’s purpose is not as straightforward as a web development contract. Deliverables may not be tangible, and the real value is in knowledge transfer and decision support. The assessment and process below outline my work with a recent client.

Overall Assessment

The first task on a general consulting project is to step back from the assets and assess the whole of ecosystem, so we inventoried domains, websites, admin accounts, services, and servers. From there we established a plan for email, calendars, domain ownership, zero-trust web security, analytics and maintenance.

Execution order and protections

With some transition to new leadership, there were some gaps between named owner accounts and current membership. Coupled with the need for a clean CDN and firewall option, we chose to move domain ownership & DNS to cloudflare where we could maintain multi-user, individual-login access to the core assets.

Hosting Move:

The hosting system inherited was underpowered and less secure than the team required. As a clean transition to securing all plugin and core elements, I pulled local copies of the sites, with a fresh install of all plugins, themes, and core wp installations before uploading and securing on a new hosting platform. This ensured a clean initial installation where no past undesired access was maintained.

Additionally we implemented secured, regular, and separately stored backups to ensure that our data is both backed up, and restorable in the case that our production servers need restoration or in a disaster recovery are not available at all.

File Security, Sharing, and Workspace

We were able to make use of a google workspace for non-profits grant to enable a full google workspace account where we transferred ownership of all client documents from several internal and external users to client owned shared google drives. With these drives permissioned separately, client now keeps internal and admin docs secure, while allowing safe sharing of necessary volunteer and project documents with the necessary individuals.

Shared Calendar and Staffing

Additionally the client runs several locations that cannot always be staffed individually. We made use of Google calendar to create space calendars where location availability could be tracked and booked in a way that all employees can clearly see when and if spaces are available with no communication gap.

Additionally staff on this group were both remote, and in-office for two locations, so we were able to implement working locations to allow visibility and planning for daily operations.

Summary

While often a developer is hired to deliver something that appears tangible on a page (url), sometimes that same consultant is just as effective on internal processes that can clear up time for you to do your work with short and long-term capacity increases. Or at least that’s what you get when you hire me.