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N. Risks & Mitigations

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Risk Register

⛔ Critical Risks

ID Risk Probability Impact Mitigation
R01 GitHub PAT in production — credential exposure ACTIVE CRITICAL Revoke immediately. Audit git history. Replace soreto-arena install method.
R02 Node 10 — zero security patches since Dec 2020 ACTIVE HIGH Deploy WAF (Cloudflare / AWS WAF) in front of reverb-react Heroku app immediately; accelerate Next.js 16 rewrite in apps/legacy-portal/ — new scaffold starts on Node 24

🔴 High Risks

ID Risk Probability Impact Mitigation
R03 seneca.js incompatible with Node 18+ MEDIUM HIGH Test on Node 18 before upgrading production; have amqplib migration plan ready
R04 Knex 0.16 → 3.x migration breaks zoe database HIGH HIGH Increment upgrade step-by-step (0.16 → 0.21 → 0.95 → 2 → 3); validate against staging DB at each step
R05 Default secrets silently active in production MEDIUM HIGH Audit all Heroku config vars; add startup validation that fails if secrets are defaults
R06 reverb-react modernization scope grows beyond estimate MEDIUM HIGH Time-box at 10 weeks; build admin + client routes first; defer edge features; gradual cut-over (10% → 50% → 100%) once scaffold is live
R07 soreto-melissa deploys without CI — regressions reach users MEDIUM HIGH Phase 1 priority: add GitHub Actions CI immediately
R08 Puppeteer 9 → 25.x breaks affiliate PDF processors HIGH MEDIUM Test each processor individually in staging after upgrade; maintain old Puppeteer as a fallback while testing
R09 connect-redis@3 → 6 breaks session handling MEDIUM HIGH Test session persistence on staging; roll back if sessions drop in production

🟡 Medium Risks

ID Risk Probability Impact Mitigation
R10 Monorepo CI becomes slow without caching MEDIUM MEDIUM Enable Turborepo remote cache from day 1; use --filter=[HEAD^1] to run only affected packages
R11 TypeScript migration in reverb-backend causes regressions LOW HIGH Adopt TypeScript only for new files initially; use allowJs: true to avoid touching existing code
R12 @rjsf/core@6.0.0-beta.10 breaks in production LOW MEDIUM Pin the exact beta version; test thoroughly before any upgrade; track the stable release
R13 Cross-schema PostgreSQL queries break when schemas are on different servers LOW HIGH Query information_schema to detect cross-schema references before any infrastructure change
R14 Monorepo PR scope expands uncontrollably LOW MEDIUM CODEOWNERS per package; enforce apps/ PRs separate from packages/ PRs
R15 Bull 3 memory leaks under high zoe load LOW MEDIUM Monitor Redis memory usage; migrate to BullMQ if leaks observed
R16 soreto-arena private fork becomes orphaned HIGH MEDIUM Replace with upstream bull-arena or bull-board from npm before PAT is revoked
R17 Two library-pair mismatches (react@17/dom@16.5 + react-router@3/dom@4) cause rendering issues MEDIUM MEDIUM Do not fix in-place — Next.js 16 rewrite in apps/legacy-portal/ starts on React 19 + App Router; both mismatches eliminated from day one
R18 Hardcoded analytics tokens (Mixpanel, GA) exposed in git MEDIUM LOW Rotate tokens; add to env vars with validated loading

🟢 Low Risks (Monitor)

ID Risk Probability Impact Mitigation
R19 Elasticsearch 7.x compatibility with Node 24 LOW MEDIUM Test @elastic/elasticsearch@7.13.0 on Node 24 before upgrade
R20 ioredis@4.14.0 compatibility with Node 24 LOW MEDIUM ioredis v4 is compatible with Node 22 — test on 24; monitor for deprecation warnings
R21 npm workspace protocol requires npm 7+ LOW LOW npm 7+ (included with Node 14+) supports workspaces natively — no tooling change needed
R22 Next.js 13 → 16 upgrade breaks melissa pages LOW MEDIUM Upgrade 13 → 14 → 15 → 16 incrementally; validate at each step. React 18 → 19 coordinated with 15 → 16.

Risk Mitigation Priority Matrix

          │  LOW IMPACT  │  MEDIUM IMPACT  │  HIGH IMPACT
──────────┼──────────────┼─────────────────┼──────────────
 ACTIVE   │              │                 │  R01, R02
──────────┼──────────────┼─────────────────┼──────────────
 HIGH     │              │  R08, R16       │  R03, R04, R05
PROB      │              │                 │  R06, R07, R09
──────────┼──────────────┼─────────────────┼──────────────
 MEDIUM   │  R18         │  R10, R12, R17  │  R11, R13
 PROB     │              │                 │
──────────┼──────────────┼─────────────────┼──────────────
 LOW      │  R21         │  R14, R15,      │  R19, R22
 PROB     │              │  R19, R22       │

Action priority: R01 → R02 → R07 → R05 → R04 → R03 → R06 → R08

Compensating Controls

Where a risk cannot be immediately mitigated, compensating controls reduce exposure:

Risk Compensating Control
R02 (Node 10 EOL) Deploy WAF (Cloudflare / AWS WAF) in front of reverb-react; restrict to known IP ranges if admin-only; accelerate Next.js 16 rewrite to reduce exposure window
R07 (melissa no CI) Manual pre-deploy checklist; designated QA session before each deploy
R05 (default secrets) Startup check that asserts secrets are not the default values; fail fast

Monitoring Recommendations

Once the monorepo migration is underway, add monitoring for:

  1. Redis memory usage — Bull 3 can accumulate completed jobs
  2. Heroku dyno count — seneca multi-process may need dyno rebalancing
  3. Error rates per service — reverb-backend's winston logs should feed an alerting system
  4. Build time per package — Turborepo cache hit rate should be >60% within 2 months of setup
  5. Legacy portal traffic — Critical for cut-over timing decision (Phase 5)