Developer removes firewall stack by eliminating public IP, not security tools

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A developer removed fail2ban, UFW, a WAF, and log-watching scripts after realising all four were compensating for a single root cause: a publicly exposed IP address inherited by default. By migrating to a private-network-only setup with default-deny inbound rules, the server's attack surface effectively disappeared, making the tools redundant. The shift was made over a single migration weekend, retiring around 1,000 lines of security configuration. Core security practices — secrets management, backups, patching, and application-level authentication — were deliberately kept in place. The author notes this approach suits standard web workloads, but acknowledges that legitimate public-address use cases still require traditional firewall tooling.

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