The Backup Wrap-Up

As we continue our "Backup to Basics" series, we touch on one of the most important questions of all: what is backup and restore? (And how does it different than archive and retrieve?) The answer to these questions are both simple and nuanced. It's important to have a solid understanding of backup and restore in order to understand how archive is different.

Reminder: You can download a complimentary copy of Mr. Backup's latest book, Modern Data Protection here: https://druva.com/ebook.

This episode follows the previous one in a very interesting way. We have a guest, Eric Bursley, whose job is to divine business and technical requirements from a vendor perspective at Presidio, an IT solutions provider. He consults with customers and helps them get from "I want" to "I need." This was a fascinating conversation that took a turn into (surprise) ransomware. Eric is a fan of the pod and knows his stuff.

As mentioned in the podcast, here is a link to the music video that is the theme song of the podcast:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPoE7nlgYe4

The episode where we meet the voice behind the song: https://player.captivate.fm/episode/b60b207b-2dfc-4b38-b5ea-1cd4c6231025

We say it all the time: your backup requirements must be based on business/organizational needs. If you keep that mind, not only will your organization be better off, it'll be easier to get approval for the new backup system you want. This episode of our Backup to Basics series goes right to that core idea, and we get advice directly from one of our favorite guests: Jeff Rochlin. He is now the Head of Technical Operations at the LA Studio of Framestore, a visual effects company. In his 30+ year career he has designed and implemented dozens of systems (at least one of them with Mr. Backup). He shares with us his tips on how to design the system AND how to get it approved.

If you'd like to see what Jeff and Curtis do for fun, check out their other podcast, The Things That Entertain Us.

If you have sometimes wondered if your apps should be in a public cloud, private cloud, or in your own datacenter, have we got the episode for you. And we'll also talk about how to protect those apps regardless of where they reside. We looked hard for an unbiased cloud expert, and I think we hit gold. We found Sagi Brody, the CTO of Opti9, an MSP that supports both public and private clouds, as well as on-premises backup infrastructure! We talk extensively about which types of things are appropriate (from a cost and risk perspective) to go into the public cloud, private cloud, SaaS apps, and even your own datacenter. It was an informative and entertaining conversation that we're sure you will enjoy.

We get right to the heart of the matter in this next episode of our Backup to Basics series. (See what we did there?). Why do we even back up? It is expensive, time consuming, and no one seems to want to be in charge of it, so we do we even do it anyway. This episode is based on Chapter 1 of W. Curtis Preston's latest O'Reilly book, Modern Data Protection, which you can download for free courtesy of Curtis' employer, Druva. Curtis believes there are three categories of reasons: human disasters, mechanical failures, and natural disasters. We talk about the odds of each of these happening, and how that's changed over the years.

The episode also starts with Mr. Backup telling the story of how he got into backup in the first place, as well as telling the story of the first time he lost data. It's the whole reason he ended up dedicating his career to backup, and he learned a lot of things from that failure.

Here are the links to other episodes we discuss in this episode of the pod.

Real Life Hurricane Disaster Recovery Story

Disaster Recovery after a hurricane - a First Hand Account

Stop Ransomware Attacks in Seconds. (Includes the Derecho story)

This week are we pleased to announce we have Joe Dehner, specialist in International Law, to discuss the legal side of e-discovery and all the things that go with it. For the first time on Restore it All, we have a lawyer discussing legal things! (Usually we just tell you we're not lawyers!) My favorite part was listening to him tell stories from actual cases that make the various points we discuss. I also enjoyed when we talk about the e-discovery boogey man, adverse inference. If you have heard me talk about this before, it's usually around the context of backup and archive – and how they are different! Hear it from the horse's mouth, so to speak.

This is a trend that's happening around the globe, and the news we got from Lloyd's of London Insurance in August is just the latest example. They're looking to exclude payments for "catastropic" and "state-sponsored" attacks. We talk about what that means. We also discuss how a plaintiff lost a recent lawsuit against their insurance company, getting $100K when what they wanted was $600K. It was how their policy was written. We also talk about a new show (streaming on Peacock in the US) called "The Undeclared War" that is technically fictional but seems all too real. We finish up with a discussion of how we see the roll of cyber insurance in this scary world of ransomware. Saddle up and listen up!

The Uber attack is huge. The initial penetration teaches about MFA, and how they were able to escalate their privileges from there is simply wrong, wrong, wrong. What can you learn from this? Well, we have a cybersecurity expert, and host of the Tech and Main podcast, on the pod this week to help us figure that out. We had planned to just talk about the Uber attack, but he also wanted to talk about what happened to the LA Unified School District. Do you have kids in school, or know someone employed in K-12 education? Shaun St. Hill makes a solid point or two about what they should be doing. All that and Curtis complaining about how much he spent on his vacation to Hawaii. Boo hoo, right?

Cyber security attacks are everywhere, and they're definitely going after what you have running in your favorite hyperscaler. Today we are joined by Paul Hadgy, CEO of Horangi Security, a cyber security company specializing in securing your cloud infrastructure. We talk about a number of things, but at one point, Mr. Backup asked him what the thought was the five biggest security mistakes people make when building out their cloud infrastructure. He gave us a pretty good list, and then talked about how they're able to secure it AND make sure you're properly utilizing it. (They can tell you resources you're paying for that you shouldn't be!) Great interview with Paul.

Jira is yet another service that could be at the center of your organization, and losing the data stored in there could cost you a lot. Did you know it doesn't even have an audit trail for many things? Not only can you lose data, you might not know what was deleted or who did it! We are joined this week from two representatives from Revyz, a new service to back up Jira. They talk about what to back up and what you can do for free, along with what functionality that misses out on. They then explain how their new service works and what it offers. Great episode where I learned a lot. Even if you don't use Jira, you will find a lot of useful info in this episode.