Free Security Checklist

The 25-Point Audit Most Businesses Skip.

An engineer-built checklist covering the exact gaps attackers exploit first. No jargon, no fear-mongering, no enterprise budget required. Work through it once and you will be ahead of the overwhelming majority of businesses operating today.

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25 actionable items

Priority-tagged Critical / Important / Quarterly

Built by an engineer, not a content farm

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The 25-Point Security Audit checklist cover page

Inside page of the security checklist showing priority-tagged items

What is covered

Six areas. 25 items. All ranked by priority.

Identity & Access

MFA, password managers, default credentials, login alerts, and stale account cleanup.

5 items

Email & Phishing Defense

SPF, DKIM, DMARC, advanced filtering, and out-of-band verification for financial requests.

4 items

Devices & Updates

Automatic patching, endpoint protection, disk encryption, and end-of-life system retirement.

5 items

Backups & Recovery

The 3-2-1 rule, automated schedules, immutable copies, and tested restores.

4 items

Website, Network & Cloud

Firewall rules, Wi-Fi isolation, cloud storage lockdown, exposed credentials, and plugin hygiene.

5 items

People & Process

Written incident response plans, tabletop drills, and vendor access reviews.

2 items

Every item is tagged: Critical highest impact · Important strong follow-up · Quarterly revisit regularly

Who this is for

You do not need an enterprise security team.

This checklist was written for people who are responsible for security but are not full-time security professionals. If you manage infrastructure, run a small business, or support end users, this is for you.

Small business owners who need a practical starting point, not a 200-page framework
IT support professionals who want to close the most common gaps first
Cloud engineers and sysadmins who manage infrastructure and want a quick audit
Junior security analysts looking for a baseline to work from
Anyone who has ever wondered whether their setup is actually secure

Built by

Ron Mercier

Cloud and Cybersecurity Engineer

I work in fraud and security operations at Verint and previously spent years at Akamai handling DDoS mitigation, compromised account response, and cloud infrastructure support across hundreds of customers. Every item on this checklist exists because of a real failure I have seen, fixed, or written about. SecureByDefault is where I share what actually works, written for people who want the truth without the hype.

MSc Cybersecurity CySA+ PenTest+ AWS CCP ISC2 CC Linux Essentials

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