The Backup Wrap-up
The Backup Wrap-up podcast turns unappreciated backup admins into cyber recovery heroes. After a brief analysis of backup-related news, each episode dives deep into one topic that you can use to better protect your organization from data loss, be it from accidents, disasters, or ransomware.
Recent Episodes
Sept. 21, 2026
Endpoint Hardening: Closing Windows Before Somebody Climbs In
Endpoint hardening is the unglamorous work of closing the windows and locking the doors before somebody comes along and jiggles the handle. Prasanna, Dr. Mike Saylor and I walk through what that actually looks like: secure builds and golden images, which services to shut off, which ones to uninstall so a bad guy can't just switch them back on, USB lockdown, full disk encryption, BIOS and UEFI, and the phone in your pocket that logs onto your corporate Wi-Fi every morning. Mike opens with the an
Sept. 14, 2026
Least Privilege Best Practices: Where to Start
Least privilege best practices start with one uncomfortable question: does this person actually need this access? A hospital in Portugal answered yes for everybody, gave every employee doctor-level access to patient records, and got hit with a 400,000 euro GDPR fine. The court's read was that they hadn't even attempted the concept. Mike Saylor, Prasanna, and I get into what least privilege really means, then move straight to the part nobody wants to talk about: where you start when everybody al
Sept. 7, 2026
Password Length vs Complexity: Why Longer Always Wins
Password length vs complexity isn't a close call. Dr. Mike Saylor joins Curtis and Prasanna to explain why the capital letter, the number, and the special character your bank demands do less for you than simply adding characters. Mike walks through the rainbow table project — an operation that has spent years computing password hashes nonstop and will sell you 20 terabytes of the results. Nobody cracks your password. They look it up. The catch, and the whole reason this episode matters, is that
Aug. 31, 2026
RDP Security Best Practices Every Admin Ignores Until It's Too Late
RDP security best practices come down to one rule most admins break on day one: that protocol has no business facing the internet. Dr. Mike Saylor and Prasanna Malaiyandi join me to break down why RDP earned the nickname Ransomware Deployment Protocol, who's out there scanning for your open port right now, and what to actually do about it. Here's the part that gets me. Every Windows box ships with this thing turned on. You didn't ask for it. Nobody handed you a manual. It's just there, running,
Aug. 24, 2026
Phishing Resistant MFA: Regular MFA Isn't Enough Anymore
Phishing resistant MFA is the difference between a bad guy getting one email address and a bad guy getting your entire company's inbox. On this episode, Prasanna, Dr. Mike Saylor, and I dig into why plain old multi-factor authentication isn't the finish line anymore; it's the starting line. We open with a real attack: a vulnerable REDCap database, stolen Google Workspace admin credentials, and email forwarding rules quietly running for over a year before anyone noticed. From there Mike breaks d
Aug. 17, 2026
Backup Security Best Practices: Lessons From a Real Red Team Breach
Backup security best practices start with one uncomfortable truth: if you haven't checked your backup server for a default password, someone else might check it for you. In this episode, Prasanna and Mike Saylor join me to dig into how backup systems become the easiest way into your network — and the easiest way out for stolen data. We walk through the real story of a red teamer who used a backup server's weak credentials to restore a domain controller straight outside the company's firewall, th
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