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’ve always felt that if you’re exposing an SSH or any kind of management port to the internet, you can avoid a lot of issues with a VPN. I’ve always setup a VPN. It prevents having to open up very much at all and then you can open configured web portal ports and the occasional front end protocol where needed.