Best Security Practices?

[TheDreadPirate]

Opening ports on your router is only needed if you need that service to be accessible outside of your network. And only if that specific port is needed to enable that. For example, if you are using a reverse proxy to handle external connections you only need to open port 80 and 443 on your router. Port 8096 does not need to be opened on your router since that port is not used for external access.