Rescuing, securing and growing a government operator's education platform
We took over a portal in critical condition: trojans, SEO phishing and pirated plugins. Over 2 years we cleaned up the system, moved learning to a secure LMS and taught the client's team to run the site on their own.
- Client
- Civil Initiatives Support Center (CISC)
- Platform
- WordPress, CRM and learning LMS
- Timeline
- 2 years of technical support
years of continuous support
users learning on the platform
of progress and accounts kept during migration
pirated plugins and libraries
CISC is a Kazakhstan operator that awards government grants to non-governmental organizations.
Its website is a large WordPress portal: both a public information resource and an internal CRM/LMS for training students and program participants.
What we inherited
Security threat
The previous developers installed pirated plugins, including a cracked LearnDash LMS. Attackers used those holes to plant a trojan and replaced the portal's description and favicon in Google.
Technical failures
Learning content loaded with constant errors and freezes — the system couldn't handle the load.
No guidelines
The team had no instructions for working with the site, so every content change risked breaking something.
Crisis response
We started with a full audit and "surgical" removal of every vulnerability.
- 01
Cleanup
Completely removed all trojans and backdoors from the system.
- 02
Reputation
Reversed the SEO phishing and quickly restored correct search engine indexing.
- 03
Licensed software
Removed every pirated plugin and library, replacing them with secure licensed alternatives.
- 04
Speed
Rewrote the content loading logic, reducing server load and speeding up the platform.
A secure learning system
After dropping the pirated LMS, we had to deploy a secure learning architecture without losing a single student.
Seamless migration
Carefully moved all data, keeping every user's progress and account intact.
Scaling
Adapted the system to steadily onboard new students — over 200 people are learning now. Sign-up, lectures and materials work without failures.
Documentation from scratch
The CISC team had no guidelines at all. We wrote detailed manuals for working with content and the CRM.
Now staff run the platform quickly and on their own. The knowledge base is kept up to date, making it easy to onboard new managers.
Result
Security
Vulnerabilities are closed; the government portal's reputation and security are fully restored.
Autonomy
Thanks to the documentation and a fixed admin panel, staff work in the system without constant help from developers.
Stability
Learning runs without interruption, bugs are fixed promptly, and the platform easily handles current traffic.
In 2 years we moved the project from constant firefighting to stable, secure growth.
cisc.kz