Patchstack user since: March 2023
When you have as much experience in the marketing world as James Traister and his team at Make Things New, you know your priorities. And for this ambitious team, security and revenue go hand in hand.
In addition to protection from plugin vulnerabilities, Make Things New are true power users of Patchstack. And in this case study, we dive into functionalities that help them manage security for all their clients.
752 vulnerability attacks blocked in one week
Vulnerabilities and vulnerability attacks are on the rise. For every plugin, there is a vulnerability waiting to be discovered. The issue is, regular solutions like firewalls often let these attacks slip through – after all, hackers exploit the logic errors in the code to mimic legitimate usage.
Only a specialized solution like Patchstack can stop attackers in their tracks. Whenever there is a dangerous plugin vulnerability on your website, Patchstack issues a vPatch – a highly-targeted security rule that blocks all attempts to exploit the vulnerability.
Your code isn’t modified, and neither is your performance.
In Make Things New’s case, the vPatch functionality blocked as many as 752 attacks in just a single week.
Helping care plan clients understand the value of your service
With all the metrics transparently tracked in the Patchstack dashboard and syndicated in the monthly reports, James and his team can easily prove their value to clients:
“One thing I love about the alerts is being able to share that with our clients. The one thing I’m always sharing with our team is that we want to always be reminding our clients of how much value we bring to them.”
Of course, when clients do get access to the site’s back-end, it’s paramount that James’s team can see who made which changes.
Monitoring activity to strengthen WordPress security
As clients, collaborators, and writers get access to WordPress sites (even with limited permissions), there’s always a chance something will go bump in the settings. James’s team uses Patchstack’s Activity Log feature to keep tabs on the goings-on.
“For example, whenever we’re not sure who did this thing on the WordPress website, we can check with the Activity Log. We’ll see how many times someone has logged in and what plugins they have updated.”
Explaining the value of cybersecurity to clients
While experts like James and his team understand why they need cybersecurity solutions, clients can sometimes be harder to convince. In our other case studies, we spoke to agency and company founders who simply integrate security under the hood of their care plans.
In James’ case, he knows one thing for sure: clients come to Make Things New for peace of mind.
“When I’ve talked to my clients about what peace of mind means to them, that means they can go on vacation and not worry about the website if it goes down. They know Jim’s team is going to take care of it.”
Everything at Make Things New is about quality, security, and consistency. Yes, agencies can be great at building a fantastic website, but an attack happens, and there’s suddenly an issue no one can solve.
Fortunately, Make Things New believes in problem-solving.
Security is a team effort
Security is never about just one company. As we always say, we need a community: security researchers to audit plugin code, ethical hackers who uncover vulnerabilities and help us prevent attacks, developers who participate in discussions about the future of WordPress (and build it, too), and users who make it all worth it.
In our conversation, James said something that stuck with us to this day:
“My service is only as good as my vendors’s services.”
And we’re proud to be working with the Make Things New team.
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