May 2017 Meeting
Our meeting this month will be on Thursday, May 25th from 6:30-9pm at LuminFire. The location for the meeting is 5155 East River Road Suite 405, Fridley, MN 55421. You can register on meetup.com and let us know you’re coming!
Tessa Kriesel will be talking about managing site configuration with a team, and Bob Weiss will have a session on WordPress security plugins and best practices. David Skarjune will also be giving us an update on WordCamp Minneapolis – St. Paul.
Configuration Management: Site Configuration in Code
Problem: You have a team of developers and you all work locally pushing up to one central development environment. Your client decides they want to change the title of the WordPress site your team is building. Changing the title is a database change, so that means changing it in your central development environment (database). Which in turn, requires you to export that database as well as every developer replacing their own local version as well.
UGH! There has got to be a better way!
Solution: Configuration Management! We will talk about what configuration management is and how you can start to use it in your current workflow.
Shields Up for WordPress Websites and Blogs
In this presentation you will learn why WordPress sites are an attractive target for cyber-criminals and attackers, why they want to hijack your site, and how to harden your WordPress site to keep your site safe. We will discuss the merits of different security plugins, as well as cover WordPress best practices for security. Technologies included are WordPress plugins WordFence, Bulletproof Security, and Sucuri, as well as two-factor plugin Mini-Orange. We will be examining the value of a Web Application Firewall. There will also be some advance techniques that involve making changes to the WordPress installation code itself.
Your presenter, Bob Weiss is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH). He writes 3 times weekly for his cybersecurity blog at wyzguyscybersecurity.com. He works as Senior Cybersecurity Engineer for computer support company Computer Integration Technologies in Woodbury MN. In addition to securing WordPress sites, he provides a variety of security services including penetration tests, and cybersecurity awareness training.
Summer Meetups
We will be meeting at LuminFire in Fridley all summer, if you are interested in speaking please let us know!