Case Studies

AEM Site Security & Hardening

Strengthening enterprise AEM platforms through layered security and proactive risk mitigation.

Service: Security & Hardening Platform: AEM Sites Layers: Server, Dispatcher, AEM Focus: Stability & Risk Reduction

Background

Security is critical for any enterprise application, especially for public-facing digital platforms. Improper security configurations on AEM can expose systems to vulnerabilities, instability, and performance risks.

We help clients secure their AEM environments by strictly following Adobe-recommended security practices and implementing layered protection across server, dispatcher, and AEM instances.

Task

The objective was to assess and strengthen security across the entire AEM stack — from the web server and dispatcher configuration to AEM publish instance hardening — and to prevent misuse patterns that could degrade performance or compromise stability.

Solution

  • Implemented Adobe-recommended server-side security configurations
  • Applied dispatcher-level security rules and request filtering
  • Hardened AEM instances against misuse and excessive load
  • Audited and restricted selectors and URL patterns to prevent abuse
  • Prevented combinatorial selector attacks that can overload publish instances
  • Built a custom security tool for managing and controlling selector usage
  • Enabled authors to configure security rules without requiring developer support
  • Implemented monitoring and alerts for unusual traffic patterns
Server: Apache Cache: Dispatcher App: AEM Publish Tool: Custom Security Utility

Results

  • Reduced exposure to security vulnerabilities and misuse risks
  • Improved stability and responsiveness of AEM publish instances
  • Prevented selector-based abuse and automated traffic attacks
  • Enabled secure operations without increasing authoring complexity
  • Improved overall trust and reliability of the platform