Best of 2022 - Backups, Security, and Ransomware
Nothing but the best for our listeners! Curtis and Prasanna review their favorite episodes from 2022, from the time Curtis had to restore Backup Central to the shocking outage at Rackspace ( which is still ongoing!). This is your chance to catch up on what you missed last year as we prepare for a new year! Here are links to all the episodes discussed. Happy New Year!
Mr. Backup Forced to Restore Backup Central
Restore Test Failed to Bad Documentation
Security expert rips Okta for their response to hack
How to prevent ransomware, slow its spread, and respond if you get it
How to prepare for an emergency (at home and work)
Backup practitioner tells stories from the trenches
Top 5 security mistakes you're making in the cloud
International lawyer discusses e-discovery in US & other countries
Shocking RackSpace Hosted Exchange Ransomware Attack
Mentioned in this episode:
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as 2022 comes to an end.
Speaker:This is our year-end review episode, where we talk about, I think
Speaker:about a dozen episodes that really hit home for us during the year.
Speaker:I hope you enjoy it.
Speaker:And I hope you have a great 2023.
W. Curtis Preston:Hi, and welcome to Backup Central's Restore it All podcast.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm your host, w Curtis Preston, aka Mr.
W. Curtis Preston:Backup.
W. Curtis Preston:And I have with me the guy that can probably explain why there's a lot more
W. Curtis Preston:echo in this room than there normally is.
W. Curtis Preston:Prasanna Malaiyandi
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Echo.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Echo, How's it
W. Curtis Preston:hear it on your end?
W. Curtis Preston:Cuz I really hear it on my end.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I can hear it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's not as bad, but you could definitely tell it's different
Prasanna Malaiyandi:than our normal podcast recordings.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, although I'm in the same room, although for those of
W. Curtis Preston:you that are used to watching the video, these things are normally way far back.
W. Curtis Preston:It's because my desk is literally in the middle of the room because,
W. Curtis Preston:um, I have prepared for the flooring, uh, the final room, the
W. Curtis Preston:flooring of the final room, and the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Woohoo.
W. Curtis Preston:Multi-month flooring project and I decided to just leave
W. Curtis Preston:my desk set up and I just have to move it around as the flooring progresses.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Which isn't bad.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:At least it's all set up and
W. Curtis Preston:yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:And everything else is outta here.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and then, and the doors are off the closet and, uh, you know, all
Prasanna Malaiyandi:it's crazy how much an empty room like, or how much
Prasanna Malaiyandi:the stuff in a room helps with echoes.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Because once you remove it all, it's like, wow,
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Well, and also the, I think the big thing is that it was carpet, right?
W. Curtis Preston:It was previously carpet and now I'm just looking at concrete, which
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So now when you put in flooring, are you gonna put in sound
W. Curtis Preston:Well, we'll see how, we'll see how it goes, right?
W. Curtis Preston:I think that well, we'll see.
W. Curtis Preston:We'll see.
W. Curtis Preston:Who knows?
W. Curtis Preston:Who knows?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Does wallpaper help?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You can put wallpaper up.
W. Curtis Preston:wallpaper, do I look like a wallpaper kind of guy to you?
W. Curtis Preston:Um, we'll see.
W. Curtis Preston:We'll see what happens once the flooring gets in.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, see if it
Prasanna Malaiyandi:but it is a final room, which is good.
W. Curtis Preston:It is the final room.
W. Curtis Preston:And, uh, yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:So I'm excited about that.
W. Curtis Preston:And I'm sure that the three, the three listeners, uh, that care
W. Curtis Preston:about that project will also be excited that I finished this.
W. Curtis Preston:And then the other, all the other listeners are gonna be like,
W. Curtis Preston:finally he is gonna stop talking about this flooring project
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And then it'll just be the next project.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Don't worry listeners.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:We got you.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:We'll keep things interesting.
W. Curtis Preston:Well, speaking of look, so interesting.
W. Curtis Preston:So, so the, the true, the full story is that that project literally
W. Curtis Preston:started in the January of last year in that, that's when I started.
W. Curtis Preston:Ordering the, um, the flooring from Costco.
W. Curtis Preston:And it took months due to, I don't know if you've heard, but there
W. Curtis Preston:was a big supply chain problem.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Was there I didn't,
W. Curtis Preston:but yeah, so, so January, so I thought I was gonna
W. Curtis Preston:start this project a lot earlier, but I ordered it in January and I got it
W. Curtis Preston:like in, I don't know, April I think.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and then I started it kind of in.
W. Curtis Preston:June, something like that.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, but anyway, anyway, but we are looking back on 2022, so it's natural that I look
W. Curtis Preston:back on what I did the entire year of 2022, which was try to put down flooring
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's okay.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's, it was a sizeable project, Curtis, you
W. Curtis Preston:It was, it was, well it still is.
W. Curtis Preston:It still is.
W. Curtis Preston:Um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:the question.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Now that you're probably 90% of the way through,
W. Curtis Preston:Mm-hmm.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Would you have hired this out to someone to get it
Prasanna Malaiyandi:done in a much shorter timeframe or.
W. Curtis Preston:I, I will say this is not on the same level as the solar
W. Curtis Preston:project, like the solar project.
W. Curtis Preston:I regret doing it the way I did.
W. Curtis Preston:I don't regret this.
W. Curtis Preston:It's just, it's just, it's a lot.
W. Curtis Preston:And I saved, like, I don't know, I think based on the pricing I saw,
W. Curtis Preston:I saved like four grand in labor.
W. Curtis Preston:So, um, Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, although I still, I have to pay for some labor because I
W. Curtis Preston:do have to pay somebody to put down the, uh, the baseboard.
W. Curtis Preston:But cuz I'm not doing that cuz that's just, that's detail work
W. Curtis Preston:that it's just better left as people that know what they're doing.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, but, uh, yeah, so I, I'm not regretting it.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, I, I will say this, I'm not gonna do it again and, um, I'm
W. Curtis Preston:not gonna do the second floor
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Wait, I was gonna ask, what about the stairs?
W. Curtis Preston:I am doing the stairs.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm gonna do the stairs.
W. Curtis Preston:But by the way, when you put vinyl flooring on stairs, you
W. Curtis Preston:have to put non tread or, yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Non, non, non-skid.
W. Curtis Preston:You have to put tread on it because, uh, people come down and stocking feet and
W. Curtis Preston:they just come flying down the stairs.
W. Curtis Preston:I don't, I don't want to, I, you know, I don't wanna see my family
W. Curtis Preston:go down the stairs like that.
W. Curtis Preston:Um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:the stairs with like a slide, you know?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:That way it's obvious.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, so we're looking back on 2022, right?
W. Curtis Preston:And you know, I, I thought, you know, we did, we did roughly 50 episodes.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, 50 plus.
W. Curtis Preston:I don't know, could we took a week or two off there, here and there for holidays?
W. Curtis Preston:Um, one of which was last week, right?
W. Curtis Preston:We're recording this on December 29th.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, when I'm looking back on 2022, I one, the first thing that pops
W. Curtis Preston:out to me was, do you remember when I had to restore backup central?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:Oh, I do remember that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:Yeah,
W. Curtis Preston:That that was an episode, Mr.
W. Curtis Preston:Backup forced to restore backup central.com.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, I don't remember why.
W. Curtis Preston:Do you remember why ? I, I don't remember what happened.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:it was, it was.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I think it was your forums got corrupted and you had an issue,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:so you had to restore your message
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, there was.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:lose all of the back history.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:I think you, I think the table, like the tables got corrupted
W. Curtis Preston:in the, in the MySQL database.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:And so, and I, I think I didn't notice it right away, like it was corrupted for
W. Curtis Preston:a few days, and so I had to, I had to go back to my object storage version.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, so that, and, and most importantly it worked.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, so I , so I liked that, that episode.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, that was back in February.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I know you said that it was successful and you were
Prasanna Malaiyandi:kind of a little surprised , right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Um, but had you actually done a restore test at any point in time or
Prasanna Malaiyandi:is it one of those things where I was
Prasanna Malaiyandi:like, uh, I, hope this works.
W. Curtis Preston:It's not the first restore that I've done at Backup Central.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and it wasn't the first restore it, it was maybe the first time.
W. Curtis Preston:No, it's not even the first time.
W. Curtis Preston:No, no, it's just, um, I think it had been a while since I'd done it.
W. Curtis Preston:That's probably what it was.
W. Curtis Preston:It had been a
W. Curtis Preston:while since I'd done it,
W. Curtis Preston:but, um, yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:But hey, it
W. Curtis Preston:worked.
W. Curtis Preston:So
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It worked.
W. Curtis Preston:so that was a, that was a
Prasanna Malaiyandi:That's all that matters in the end.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:But speak, yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Speaking of which, maybe you can talk about this, uh, the Restore
W. Curtis Preston:test failed, uh, podcast that we had, um, due to bad documentation.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Oh my gosh, this happens all the time.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I.
W. Curtis Preston:Gary Williams.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:this happens all the time where it's like, okay, I know
Prasanna Malaiyandi:that we have all this documentation.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I think in that episode, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it was that
Prasanna Malaiyandi:like they'd forgotten to include like an active directory server or some
Prasanna Malaiyandi:other piece of their infrastructure.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:As part of the backups that had happened.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And so when they went to restore it and do their DR test, it wasn't like they
Prasanna Malaiyandi:didn't have the bits to be able to first authenticate before they can actually
Prasanna Malaiyandi:do the restores and bring everything up.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And so their DR test failed.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:But luckily they found it out while they were doing the actual test
Prasanna Malaiyandi:and not when they actually had to do a failover to recover from an.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And that just goes back, I know Curtis, you always talk about this too.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's like make sure you test your dr.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Make sure you have everything done right.
W. Curtis Preston:And make sure that it's not the same person doing it,
W. Curtis Preston:which is kind of what happened there.
W. Curtis Preston:I think he, wasn't he a new person?
W. Curtis Preston:He was a
W. Curtis Preston:new person, or it was something, he was new and he tested it
W. Curtis Preston:and, and it didn't work well.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, but
Prasanna Malaiyandi:that's right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It was
W. Curtis Preston:they tested it because they figured it out and Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:yep.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:I
W. Curtis Preston:like, I liked that episode
Prasanna Malaiyandi:He was new and it's like you always say it's like a poor job.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yep.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:And we, and then we had, we had a couple of great episodes with a
W. Curtis Preston:guy that we refer to as Snorkel 42, because that's his Reddit handle.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, he, he's not, it's funny, he, you know, he goes on video, uh, we know
W. Curtis Preston:who he is, but he just prefers to go by that by the handle, and that's fine.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, but we, he, he, there was the big Okta hack.
W. Curtis Preston:which you may recall
W. Curtis Preston:from, uh, when was that?
W. Curtis Preston:I'm looking
Prasanna Malaiyandi:that was like, I wanna say
W. Curtis Preston:half look, looks like it was in March.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and yeah, he ripped a, a new one.
W. Curtis Preston:That's what, what I recall.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:and, and, and I think he, he was unhappy with the fact
Prasanna Malaiyandi:that they weren't transparent about what happened and it took so long
Prasanna Malaiyandi:before they shared any information.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I don't think he was blaming necessarily what had happened, that they had
Prasanna Malaiyandi:maybe had a fault in security.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I think it was they could have done a better job of messaging,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:informing people what had gone on.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:But cuz I think for weeks people were in the.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:They didn't know what happened and
W. Curtis Preston:you,
W. Curtis Preston:yeah, you, you, you fast forward up to another interesting episode
W. Curtis Preston:that we did just like last week.
W. Curtis Preston:The one about the, um, the.
W. Curtis Preston:Darn it.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, what's it called?
W. Curtis Preston:Rackspace?
W. Curtis Preston:The Rackspace
W. Curtis Preston:outage.
W. Curtis Preston:They, that, that's still going on, right?
W. Curtis Preston:It started on December 2nd.
W. Curtis Preston:It's still ongoing.
W. Curtis Preston:And, uh, they have been as transparent as milk.
W. Curtis Preston:Um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I was gonna say like a black hole, but
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, they, you know, Yeah, that's just a med.
W. Curtis Preston:And, and, and, and we, we talked about the same thing with the Uber, the Uber story.
W. Curtis Preston:That was
W. Curtis Preston:another great story where we talked about lessons that we can learn.
W. Curtis Preston:And again, it's like, Transparency matters.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, now unfortunately, there's a LastPass story.
W. Curtis Preston:We we're doing a review of 2022, but also in 2022 was the LastPass hack, which we're
W. Curtis Preston:gonna do an episode on, I think next week.
W. Curtis Preston:But, um, that, so on the one hand they're being pretty transparent.
W. Curtis Preston:On the other hand, it's gonna really hurt them as a company.
W. Curtis Preston:But, um, you know, there are people who are saying You need to drop last
W. Curtis Preston:pass.
W. Curtis Preston:Um,
W. Curtis Preston:but, um, so let's see what else, what else
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So, so the other thing, the other thing also with snorkel,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:so I know we did a couple episodes, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I know we talked about the Octa.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:The other thing though that I think he did a really good job with is the basics
Prasanna Malaiyandi:that you should be thinking about from a security perspective to try to prevent
Prasanna Malaiyandi:the damage from ransomware, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Or bad actors,
W. Curtis Preston:exactly.
W. Curtis Preston:Exactly.
W. Curtis Preston:Just.
W. Curtis Preston:Just assume you're going to get ransomware and then do these things
W. Curtis Preston:in your environment so that when you get ransomware, it will be
W. Curtis Preston:able to do little to no damage.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah, and it was a lot of common sense things
Prasanna Malaiyandi:that you didn't have to s shell out a lot of money for, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:But it was things that you should be doing from a best practices perspective,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:and I really like that episode as well.
W. Curtis Preston:Absolutely.
W. Curtis Preston:That was, I, I, yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:And you know, it's funny, uh, just in terms of like fun episodes, the one
W. Curtis Preston:right after that one, the one with Virginia Nichols, the one where you,
W. Curtis Preston:and I said like three words, um, that was about preparing for an emergency,
W. Curtis Preston:not so much a disaster, but that, that was just like, in terms of when I look
W. Curtis Preston:back on episodes, it just, you know, made me, I don't know, made me laugh.
W. Curtis Preston:I guess it was a
W. Curtis Preston:fun episode because that woman.
W. Curtis Preston:A powerhouse.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, you know, and literally we were just like, how do you prepare for an emergency?
W. Curtis Preston:And then she talked for 45 minutes.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Um,
W. Curtis Preston:, that was, that
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And, and it's things that you don't even think about, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's like an emergency in your community, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Not necessarily like a
Prasanna Malaiyandi:computer outage, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It was, Hey, you have a fire, you have a tornado that goes
Prasanna Malaiyandi:through your neighborhood.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:What are the things you need to do?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:How do you prepare?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:How do you make sure you have a communications plan?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So all the things that people should
W. Curtis Preston:That was, yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:And, and, and she approaches it both from a personal standpoint,
W. Curtis Preston:uh, as well as a, um, a business
W. Curtis Preston:standpoint.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:yeah, the risk, right?
W. Curtis Preston:yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:And then there was an episode where we had, what I'm gonna refer to as the
W. Curtis Preston:most mentioned person this podcast.
W. Curtis Preston:Do you know who I'm talking about?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Mr.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Stuart Little, I love Stuart.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:He always comes up
W. Curtis Preston:comes up just a lot.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, he just, yeah, he just comes up.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, and so basically we finally got him on, he's retired now.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and, uh, you know, and we talked about his, you know, so his backup practitioner
W. Curtis Preston:tells stories from the trenches.
W. Curtis Preston:That was a lot of fun.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, cuz I've known Stuart for a long time.
W. Curtis Preston:He has, he has more than a few Curtis stories right?
W. Curtis Preston:That he likes
W. Curtis Preston:to tell.
W. Curtis Preston:Where I don't, I don't necessarily fare very well in those stories, but,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:it's okay.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's a learning experience for all of us.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And then well, and then speaking of that, right after that, we sort of started
Prasanna Malaiyandi:talking about various technologies that are out there and how sort of.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Disc isn't great for long-term archiving, right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Or keeping data around for a long time.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Tape is great, but there are downsides with tape as well.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And so there was, uh, this awesome new techno, or not new, but this
Prasanna Malaiyandi:technology I never heard about, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:But that was introduced by another guest of the podcast, Daniel Rose Hill.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Hey Daniel, the backup anorak right uh, talking.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Talking about M disk, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And we had the inventor, right, Barry Lunt on the podcast
Prasanna Malaiyandi:talking about that technology.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:That was pretty cool cuz it like, you know, he was there at the very beginning
W. Curtis Preston:and he was able to, Uh, he, he, he set straight what I would think of as a
W. Curtis Preston:few, a few misunderstandings of mine.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, remember I thought that like, uh, cuz he's LDS and I
W. Curtis Preston:thought that LDS was like part of
W. Curtis Preston:the foundation of it, right.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and he's, you know, he is like, oh, we
W. Curtis Preston:would've loved to have him as a customer, but that, but that
W. Curtis Preston:isn't, that isn't how it happened.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and, uh, but yeah, that idea of, I, I, I.
W. Curtis Preston:I hope that technology continues to do well.
W. Curtis Preston:It's one of these things where it's easy to explain and, um, uh, it's also to easy.
W. Curtis Preston:It's easy to, I don't know, confuse it, you know what I mean?
W. Curtis Preston:Um, there are some sort of knockoffs out there.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and then this next one that, that I'm looking at here,
W. Curtis Preston:it was Paul Hadgy from, um,
W. Curtis Preston:he's the, the, CEO of Harangi.
W. Curtis Preston:So security, right.
W. Curtis Preston:I don't think enough people talk about security in the cloud.
W. Curtis Preston:And he, he, he has a company that basically this is what
W. Curtis Preston:they do is they help people do better security in the cloud.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and, uh, I think that was a, that was a very interesting.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Speaking of security in the cloud, I think that there's like
Prasanna Malaiyandi:a misunderstanding from some customers or some end users that when you move to
Prasanna Malaiyandi:the cloud, everything is handled for you.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You don't have to worry about security, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You don't have to.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Everything is secure.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You don't have to worry about backups.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:, and I think that's a fallacy because it makes the cloud is
Prasanna Malaiyandi:so powerful and so flexible that you can easily shoot yourself in
Prasanna Malaiyandi:the foot if you're not careful.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Even look at what Amazon used to do years ago, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And they fixed it finally, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Anytime you created an S3 bucket, it was publicly available to everyone.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And how many security issues did that cause?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And yet, even though they've changed it, where the default is no
Prasanna Malaiyandi:longer enabled by default, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Public access enabled by default.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Still people got it wrong and people left buckets open,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:which led to breaches and other
W. Curtis Preston:right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It is a hard thing, especially with all these complex
Prasanna Malaiyandi:services and things that you normally may not consider when dealing with
Prasanna Malaiyandi:an on-premises infrastructure that you can sort of put a wall around and
Prasanna Malaiyandi:be like, yep, this is good for me.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:When it's in the cloud, you no longer have that ability to necessarily
Prasanna Malaiyandi:put the wall in place unless you do things explicitly and different.
W. Curtis Preston:Exactly.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and, and then the, the next thing that you know, this is one of
W. Curtis Preston:those where it's a topic that comes up a lot, I think, or at least I
W. Curtis Preston:bring it up a lot on this podcast.
W. Curtis Preston:And it was interesting to talk to somebody who actually does it.
W. Curtis Preston:And that is this idea of the, the actual legal.
W. Curtis Preston:Side of things, right?
W. Curtis Preston:We, we, we had a, a person who specializes in international law, Joseph Dayner,
W. Curtis Preston:and, uh, he's an international lawyer and talking about e-discovery and, you
W. Curtis Preston:know, the way it works in the US and the way it works in other countries.
W. Curtis Preston:It was interesting.
W. Curtis Preston:I, I knew that we were, we were different when it comes to other
W. Curtis Preston:countries, but it was interesting how he said that, you know, there are
W. Curtis Preston:some countries that find the way we.
W. Curtis Preston:Discovery, like hilarious.
W. Curtis Preston:The idea that you are required, if you've got the evidence in your
W. Curtis Preston:backyard, you're required to give it to the person who's suing you.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:And, And, there are countries where, um, I think he said Germany was one of
W. Curtis Preston:them, where, where they're just like,
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, no, you're not
W. Curtis Preston:required to do that, but, but in the US you are.
W. Curtis Preston:And so the, the thing that I'm always warning people about is, you know,
W. Curtis Preston:backup and recovery and using your backups as archives and storing your
W. Curtis Preston:email for a really long period of time.
W. Curtis Preston:And then if you're in the US and many other countries that if you're
W. Curtis Preston:sued, you then have to provide that.
W. Curtis Preston:And, um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:have an example of that, right, Curtis?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You've actually experienced that
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, I have.
W. Curtis Preston:And yeah, and it, and it's, and it's, um, you know, I saw it cost
W. Curtis Preston:a company millions of dollars.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, I've also seen it, I've also meaning that it cost them millions
W. Curtis Preston:of dollars to get the data back.
W. Curtis Preston:I've, I've seen it cost a company billions of dollars where they
W. Curtis Preston:lost the lawsuit because they were so bad at retrieving their email.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, that they, um, the, the judge issued, and we talked about it in
W. Curtis Preston:the recording, the adverse inference.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, which is basically the judge is inferring something from your
W. Curtis Preston:behavior that is adverse to your case.
W. Curtis Preston:And
W. Curtis Preston:essentially what this judge said was nobody could be this
W. Curtis Preston:bad at restoring their stuff.
W. Curtis Preston:so they clearly, they're doing it on
W. Curtis Preston:purpose.
W. Curtis Preston:And so they lost the lawsuit as a result, and it was a
W. Curtis Preston:multi-billion dollar lawsuit.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, so let's talk about, what I think is our final normal recording
W. Curtis Preston:of 2022, which is the, the Rackspace, um, you know, recording.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:If you haven't heard that one, that's, I think the one, the
W. Curtis Preston:episode immediately preceding this one, we just cover what we knew.
W. Curtis Preston:A couple weeks ago.
W. Curtis Preston:We know more now.
W. Curtis Preston:Um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:but it's not any better news though for customers.
W. Curtis Preston:w well, no.
W. Curtis Preston:Well, no, it's better.
W. Curtis Preston:Well, I, well, so two weeks ago we were thinking they had no backups.
W. Curtis Preston:, right?
W. Curtis Preston:It looks like now they do have some backups.
W. Curtis Preston:They, again, just were really bad at restoring them.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and that, uh, and so, and so they really left some people out in
W. Curtis Preston:the, you know, uh, so it's, let's,
W. Curtis Preston:so they restored people's email services, but by, by moving them over to 365, okay?
W. Curtis Preston:Now you can send and receive.
W. Curtis Preston:But for weeks of time, many weeks of time, they didn't allow these
W. Curtis Preston:people access to their previous email because they didn't, because they
W. Curtis Preston:didn't have a good backup of it.
W. Curtis Preston:And by good backup, I mean one that you could bring up in, I don't know, a few
W. Curtis Preston:days, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Well,
W. Curtis Preston:we don't yet.
W. Curtis Preston:No.
W. Curtis Preston:And this is because of the opacity that they have approached
W. Curtis Preston:this, what we don't yet know.
W. Curtis Preston:the degree to which ransomware like affected their ability to
W. Curtis Preston:restore.
W. Curtis Preston:We don't know the degree to we, you know, we don't know.
W. Curtis Preston:We don't know because they haven't
W. Curtis Preston:really said anything.
W. Curtis Preston:Um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:the challenge, right, is they haven't said anything.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:A lot of people are making some assumptions, right, about what
Prasanna Malaiyandi:could go on just based on limited information out there or speculation,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:but it's one of those things.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Chris, do you think we will ever really know what happened?
W. Curtis Preston:We're just left to just theorize right.
W. Curtis Preston:Is the reason they were so slow at restoring that they
W. Curtis Preston:were too busy trying to.
W. Curtis Preston:, were they still putting
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, were, because it looks like they had backups, um, for, for most of
W. Curtis Preston:the customers, they had backups.
W. Curtis Preston:And interestingly enough, let's just bring this up because I bring this up a lot.
W. Curtis Preston:I say that SaaS services, and this is a SaaS service.
W. Curtis Preston:Hosted exchange, they are not responsible for your backups.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:And, and and what I normally say is that if they're responsible for your backups,
W. Curtis Preston:it will be in your contract, right?
W. Curtis Preston:It will be in the terms of service.
W. Curtis Preston:Well, guess what It was in their terms of service.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Oh no,
W. Curtis Preston:that's what we know now that we didn't know then.
W. Curtis Preston:Okay.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, I wanna, I wanna do a whole lot other separate episode on this, but yeah, it,
W. Curtis Preston:it, it, that's, that's new information.
W. Curtis Preston:It was in
W. Curtis Preston:there, but what's interesting, what's interesting, you
W. Curtis Preston:know what I, you know what
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:We'll do it in the next
W. Curtis Preston:episode.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, we'll do it well.
W. Curtis Preston:We'll, well, right now we gotta cover last pass.
W. Curtis Preston:The next episode will be last pass, and hopefully
W. Curtis Preston:after that we'll get some, but yeah, it's in their, it's in their sla,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Oof.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Just based on everything we've talked about though, it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Mainly has been around sort of how do you recover from bad events that happen.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It might be natural, it could be bad actors.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:How do you protect yourself or minimize the risk?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And then how do you recover in situations?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Just sort of recapping the, a lot of the cases that we've talked about.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And I don't think it's going away either.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I think 2023 is gonna be more of the.
W. Curtis Preston:no, it's not going away.
W. Curtis Preston:Join 23.
W. Curtis Preston:More the same.
W. Curtis Preston:More the same.
W. Curtis Preston:Same, but better, different, worse.
W. Curtis Preston:I don't know that , but I will
W. Curtis Preston:say
W. Curtis Preston:Before 2023 gets here, my flooring will be done It will, it will be done.
W. Curtis Preston:It will
W. Curtis Preston:be done today or tomorrow?
W. Curtis Preston:Probably Today.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Um,
W. Curtis Preston:well, hey, it's been fun.
W. Curtis Preston:We've done another year of this.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, we've been doing how long?
W. Curtis Preston:We've been doing this now since 2019, June of 2019.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:years.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yep.
W. Curtis Preston:Wow, dude.
W. Curtis Preston:And, and, and, and the, the, um, let's see the episode.
W. Curtis Preston:This episode will be 184.
W. Curtis Preston:I think that's 184 episodes in three and a half years.
W. Curtis Preston:Crazy
W. Curtis Preston:that that we've figured out how to talk about this for such a long time.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I thank you to the listeners also for listening to us
Prasanna Malaiyandi:because without you we wouldn't be here.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Doing this week in,
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, absolutely.
W. Curtis Preston:Absolutely.
W. Curtis Preston:And we love the ones that reach out.
W. Curtis Preston:We love the ones that, uh, um, by the way, we, we didn't
W. Curtis Preston:even do our usual disclaimer.
W. Curtis Preston:This is, this is an independent podcast.
W. Curtis Preston:This is just me and Prasanna that happened to know each other cuz we
W. Curtis Preston:used to work at the same company.
W. Curtis Preston:He abandoned us for a different company, So I work at Druva, he works at Zoom.
W. Curtis Preston:We're not speaking for either company.
W. Curtis Preston:And, uh, this is an independent podcast, a couple of couple of indies.
W. Curtis Preston:And, um, yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:And so we, we, we want you to rate us, rate the podcast, scroll
W. Curtis Preston:down to where you're, you're at.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, does that make sure to follow, you know, subscribe to the episode
W. Curtis Preston:or subscribe to the podcast.
W. Curtis Preston:Give us some stars, give us some comments, man.
W. Curtis Preston:We love the comments and we also would love to have you join the conversation.
W. Curtis Preston:Whether you wanna do it privately or publicly, send me an email, uh, w Curtis
W. Curtis Preston:Preston gmail or, uh, at WC Preston on
W. Curtis Preston:Twitter.
W. Curtis Preston:That
Prasanna Malaiyandi:much longer.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, I don't know.
W. Curtis Preston:My recommendation right now is, uh, on Tesla stock is buy, um,
W. Curtis Preston:because it's down quite a bit.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:We are not financial advisors.
W. Curtis Preston:We are not
W. Curtis Preston:financial advisors.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Anything you hear mentioned on the podcast is our opinion.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Please speak with your own financial advisor for any advice
W. Curtis Preston:not financial advisors.
W. Curtis Preston:We're, we're not, uh, we're not
W. Curtis Preston:legal advisors.
W. Curtis Preston:We're not doctors.
W. Curtis Preston:Although we occasionally give opinions regarding all three of those.
W. Curtis Preston:They are worth exactly what you paid for 'em.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, so anyway, well, thanks again for another fun year
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Likewise Curtis, and here's a better 2023.
W. Curtis Preston:Good luck with that.
W. Curtis Preston:Again, thanks for listening and be sure to subscribe so that you can restore it all.
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