Hardening a CRM for Secure, Reliable Daily Operations

Challenge

A growing CRM needed stronger security boundaries, more dependable contact and deal workflows, and a deployment foundation that could support continued product development without putting customer data or operational continuity at risk.

Approach

Secured the application by removing exposed credentials, restricting CORS, adding rate limits and security headers, and separating administrative credentials from browser access. Built a configurable Kanban pipeline, a timezone-safe meeting calendar, and attention-focused dashboards; strengthened contact integrity with server-validated duplicate checks, reversible archiving, and complete history; and added Alembic migrations, database-isolation checks, backup scripts, an API contract matrix, and a deployment verification runbook.

Impact

• —Established 527 isolated Pytest tests across backend behavior and data boundaries
• —Added frontend unit coverage and 43 Playwright end-to-end specifications
• —Reduced security exposure with credential isolation, restricted CORS, rate limiting, and security headers
• —Made deployment and recovery repeatable with migrations, backups, contract checks, and a verification runbook