The server got hit and I only knew because a file quietly changed itself

Nobody ever gets excited about file integrity monitoring. It's the security control you configure once, forget about, and only remember exists when the auditor asks for a change log. I get it. It's not shiny. But last month it's the only thing that told me something was wrong. I run a small business infrastructure stack — a few self-hosted services, a couple of public-facing containers, the…