March 2026 marks the release of Stott Security v5, a significant update to the popular web security add-on for Optimizely CMS 12+, with more than 115,000 downloads across nuget.org and nuget.optimizely.com. Below is a high-level overview of what’s new in this release.

Before we get into the details, we all know that the release of Optimizely CMS 13 is imminent. A CMS 13 compatible version of Stott Security has already been developed and will be updated as we see more previews of CMS 13. It is my intention to have a day 1 release of this add-on.

Custom Headers

I have had multiple requests to add functionality that allows users to add or remove custom headers from the response. The data storage and UI for the existing Response Headers UI was inflexible, therefore I have rebuilt this feature from the ground up.

Users can add new headers with any valid header name structure and define a value and a behaviour. The three behaviours are:

Custom Headers Interface

For traditional / in-process websites, the order of your middlewares and the point in time where the header is added will impact the success rate for removal of headers. The server header for example is not present in the Response object while middlewares are processed and as such will not be impacted. Also headers added after the response has been served will not be affected, this means headers added by CloudFlare for example will not be removed.

For Headless users, the Header Listing API has been updated so that all configured headers now have an “isRemoval” property that highlights if the header should be removed or not.

Headless API Examples:

Example Response:

[
    {
        "key": "a-custom-header",
        "value": "a-value",
        "isRemoval": false
    },
    {
        "key": "Content-Security-Policy",
        "value": "default-src \u0027self\u0027;...", // Full CSP will be included
        "isRemoval": false
    },
    {
        "key": "server",
        "value": "",
        "isRemoval": true
    },
    {
        "key": "X-Content-Type-Options",
        "value": "nosniff",
        "isRemoval": false
    },
    {
        "key": "X-Xss-Protection",
        "value": "0",
        "isRemoval": false
    }
]

⚠️ Migration warning: Any configuration on the old Response Headers interface will need to be recreated. Response Headers that were previously managed through the old interface will appear as Disabled and the edit modal will present the same friendly options that were available in the previous UI. The headers that need re-configuring are limited to:

Audit Record Clean Up

Stott Security has long had the ability to Audit changes to the configuration settings, but there has not been any means to clean up the audit records. A new scheduled job called [Stott Security] Audit Record Clean Up has been created that will remove audit records that exceed a configured retention period. By default this period is set to 2 years, but can be altered during the Add-On configuration by specifying the AuditRetentionPeriod.

services.AddStottSecurity(options =>
{
  options.ConnectionStringName = "EPiServerDB";
  options.NonceHashExclusionPaths.Add("/exclude-me");
  options.AuditRetentionPeriod = TimeSpan.FromDays(730); 
},
authorization =>
{
  authorization.AddPolicy(CspConstants.AuthorizationPolicy, policy =>
  {
    policy.RequireRole("WebAdmins");
  });
});

Filtering of audit records has always been present within the system, however it was limited to simple filters for user, operation, record and date range. Looking for very specific changes was a time consuming exercise. This change adds a text filter which will be used to find matches within the following fields:

Audit Interface

🙏 Thank you to Samuel Joseph for delivering Add a free text filter to the Audit Screen.

Granular Settings Import

The ability to import and export settings was introduced back in version 2.6.0 but was straight forwards in terms of options. Over time this functionality was updated to support partial imports by ignoring root settings that were null. As part of this release, users now have the ability to choose specifically which settings they want to import.

Import Settings Modal

🙏 Thank you to Samuel Joseph for providing the initial implementation of Enhance Settings Import Tool.

Summary

Stott Security is a free, open-source add-on for Optimizely CMS 12+, designed from the ground up to be accessible to both technical and non-technical users, with built-in audit functionality to provide clear accountability. The add-on supports both PaaS-based traditional headed and headless solutions.

Version 5 delivers a major update featuring a rebuilt Response Headers functionality with enhanced support for custom headers; enhanced Audit Management with configurable retention periods and new free-text audit search, and a more granular Settings Import tool that allows selective configuration.

Development Optimizely Stott Security
MVP Technology PLATINUM

Mark Stott

A Solutions Architect and Optimizely MVP at Netcel, creator of the Stott Security and Stott Robots Handler addons for Optimizely CMS. He shares insights and solutions for modern web development challenges.