Advice please
Context - I manage a cybersecurity team for a financial services firm. One of the areas I'm responsible for is building the data loss prevention policies, which requires testing for email and web content inspection. Historically we've used 3rd party sites to upload test files and send emails to, failed uploads aligned with system entries validate successful blocks etc. All relatively straightforward however I would like to build our own site for such uploads.
I have a CS background though that was nearly 20 years ago and web development was never really my jam though I expect things have moved on significantly since then, React wasn't a thing the last time I messed around with web dev. In short, I don't know what I don't know, so just looking for a steer in the right direction and I'm happy to do the heavy lifting.
The basic functionality would be accepting file uploads and text through form entry, log the attempt and immediately delete the content. I'll wrap the usual security around it, authentication, input sanitization, file size restrictions and so on. I'd also like to host an SMTP server that would log emails sent to a particular address - source, subject, timestamp then delete the content.
Since this is more a tool to solve other problems I'm ideally not looking to reinvent the wheel or create anything groundbreaking, nor am I going to change careers anytime soon just looking for advice on the simplest way to tackle the problem. I've had some success with Claude building the site and wrapping it into a Docker container but then that would need hosting somewhere that's accessible from the corporate network and definitely not my home, and all the challenges that come with that.
Are there any out-the-box type hosting companies that would work with some tweaking, or am I better off running a linux VM on a Digital Ocean droplet and manage the lot through Docker/Podman/Kubernetes etc?