The Backup Wrap-Up

Today we are proud to have as our guest, Zach Fuller, a founding partner of the Silent Sector, a cybersecurity firm -- and a former Green Beret who served in combat. We talk a little about how his service made him the person he is today, and how it lead him ultimately into helping people protect their own data. We talk about his top few things he wishes people would do to secure their environments (in addition to Mr. Backup's usual suggestions of password management, MFA, and patch management). we found Zach a very engaging person, and we know you'll learn a lot.

Our guest this week (Jim Love from the Hashtag Trending podcast and IT World Canada) touched on something we thought was profound. He felt that some organizations had what he called a "culture of recovery," meaning that they took recovery into account in all aspects of the org. He explained how he fostered this in companies where he worked, and how you can do the same. We also covered generative AI, and he shared several other tips from his many years in the business. Learn the old ways!

iCloud is not a backup; it is a synchronization tool. If you delete things on your phone, it deletes them in iCloud. iCloud is not a backup. In fact, if you have storage optimization turned on, the high-resolution verion of your photos is stored in only one place. If you delete it, it's gone forever. Mr. Backup tries tries three different ways to back up your iPhone, and finally settled on idrive.

iDrive was the only solution we found that worked for both iPhone and Android (including if you turned on optimized storage).  If you'd like to try it, make sure to use the link below.

Listeners to the podcast get 90% off their first year using the following link (We will also get a referral fee):

https://www.idrive.com/idrive/o/p/backupcentral/partner90

This week we talk with Eric Jeffery, a cybersecurity SE and host of the Cyber Security Grey Beard podcast, and he is just a little miffed about how organizations are responding to cyber attacks today. It's not so much about how they respond to the attack itself; it's how they communicate what happened to the public – if at all. He's submitting what happened at the LA Unified School District as his case in point. He's a bit fired up, so this will be a fun one.

Imagine you're a small business or household that just lost everything in a fire, and your phones, ipads, and laptops went up in flames too. Where do you start? You've got a cloud-based password manager (e.g. Dashlane, OnePassword, KeyPass) and MFA system (e.g. Google Authenticator, Authy). How do you authenticate yourself with these systems if you have all new hardware? That's what we're talking about in this episode.

We reference this great previous episode about being prepared for disasters:

https://www.backupcentral.com/how-to-prepare-for-an-emergency-at-home-and-work/

There was a shocking article by Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal about how you are a simple bar trick away from losing access to all your photos (and some money) forever. All they need to do is steal your iPhone after seeing you type in your passcode, and they can lock you out of your account forever. 1. This is why we back up stuff and 2. There is a way to stop this. I'm not yet sure how vulnerable Android folks are to the same problem. If I've piqued your interest, this is the episode for you.

Here are two YouTube videos where the WSJ talks about this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUYODQB_2wQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCfb9Wizq9Q

Have we got a packed episode for you.  This week in our continued Backup to Basics series, we dive deep into the various options for backing up and recovering databases, along with the pros and cons of each.  Want to figure out the best way to back up your traditional or modern database? This is your episode.  As usual, Mr. Backup and Prasanna also manage to make it fun. This is a great episode and we think you'll enjoy it. 

A few weeks ago, Mr. Backup (W. Curtis Preston) said he didn't understand why people used flash for backups. He said it was overkill. A few days later, Howard Marks of Vast (friend of the pod) took issue with that statement, and asked for the chance to defend Vast's title, so to speak. Howard is a friend of the pod and we were happy to say yes. We also take the opportunity to get an update on Vast, and discuss their data reduction techniques in more detail. Bonus points if you get the cover art reference.

Are you doing all you can to stop ransomware attacks before they happen, or kill them the moment they show up? Have you looked into this and found yourself swimming in alphabet soup (SIEM, SOAR, EDR, XDR)? Have you looked at some of these tools and found them to be prohibitively expensive or too complex? This is the episode for you. We have Dez Rock, CEO of SIEMonster, a SIEM/SOAR/XDR as a service company. She helps us weed our way through these acronyms, and then tells us about how SIEMonster (pronounced sea-monster) is bringing this important technology to companies of all sizes.

Last year LastPass suffered two hacks that left their customer's data exposed.  What can you learn from this event, even if you're not a LastPass customer?  We use this hack as an example of what your company should do (or not do) if it ever suffers such a hack.  We also talk about password managers, and what this hack means to those who use them.  You do use one, right?  This is a great episode, chock full of information.  We hope you enjoy it.