Background: 15 years of experience in software and apparently spoiled because it was already set up correctly.
Been practicing doing my own servers, published a test site and 24 hours later, root was compromised.
Rolled back to the backup before I made it public and now I have a security checklist.
I don’t think I’m ever opening up anything to the internet. It’s scary out there.
I don’t trust my competence, and if I did, I dont trust my attention to detail. That’s why I outsource my security: pihole+firebog for links, ISP for my firewall, and Tailscale for tunnels. I’m not claiming any of them are the best, but they’re all better than me.
Isp for firewalls might not be better than you. Get something dedicated.
Ubiquiti or pfsense is a good start.