The Backup Wrap-Up

W. Curtis Preston (Mr. Backup)

Formerly known as "Restore it All," 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.

The Backup Wrap-up is hosted by W. Curtis Preston (Mr. Backup) and his co-host Prasanna Malaiyandi. Curtis' passion for backups began over 30 years ago when his employer, a $35B bank, lost its purchasing database – and the backups he was in charge of were worthless. After miraculously not being fired, he resolved to learn everything he could about a topic most people try to get away from. His co-host, Prasanna, saw similar tragedies from the vendor side of the house and also wanted to do whatever he could to stop that from happening to others.

A particular focus lately has been the scourge of ransomware that is plaguing IT organizations across the globe. That's why in addition to backup and disaster recovery, we also touch on information security techniques you can use to protect your backup systems from ransomware. If you'd like to go from being unappreciated to being a cyber recovery hero, this is the podcast for you.

Subscribe Listen in podnod RSS feed Show website

359 episodes
Updated Yesterday

Episodes359

Newest first

Nov 21, 2022 · 45 min
What is backup and restore? (Backup to Basics Series)
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.
Nov 14, 2022 · 39 min
Divining Requirements out of the Organization
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
Oct 31, 2022 · 47 min
Getting approval for a new backup design (Backup to Basics Series)
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.
Oct 24, 2022 · 42 min
When to use public or private cloud AND how to protect it
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.
Oct 17, 2022 · 39 min
Why do we even back up? (Backup to Basics Series)
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)
Oct 10, 2022 · 45 min
International lawyer discusses e-discovery in US & other countries
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.
Oct 3, 2022 · 38 min
Your cyber insurance doesn't want to pay for your hack
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!
Sep 26, 2022 · 41 min
Learning lessons from the Uber and LA USD cyberattacks
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?
Sep 19, 2022 · 43 min
Top 5 security mistakes you're making in the cloud
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.
Sep 12, 2022 · 45 min
How to back up Jira
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.
Sep 6, 2022 · 41 min
What are RTO and RPO & how do they drive backup design?
If you don't meet your company's Recovery time objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective with your backup design, nothing else matters. Seriously. No one cares if you can back up – only that you can restore in a timeframe they consider reasonable. The only way that's going to happen is if you agree to these times UPFRONT. In this episode in our new back to basics series, we'll jump right into this extremely important topic. We'll explain what RTO & RPO are, what recovery time and recovery point actual are, and how they relate to RTO & RPO. We'll also explain how to get your company to agree to them.
Aug 29, 2022 · 47 min
Why you need a password manager
Why don't you have a password manager already? Our guest this week, Chris Hayner, blogger at hayner.net and host of the Chaos Lever podcast, wrote a great blog called Yes, you need a password manager. "Yes, You Do Need A Password Manager, Brett. Yes You Do!" Both Prasanna and Curtis DO have password managers, so he's preaching to the choir. But if you'd like to hear the argument for why you need one, and arguments against many of the usual excuses for not having one, then this is the episode you need. And, as usual, we have a little fun along the way.
Aug 22, 2022 · 43 min
Datacore becomes leader in container-attached storage
Datacore has been one of the storage industry's best-kept secrets for a long time, quietly growing a dedicated customer base in Fort Lauderdale. Their CEO, Dave Zabrowski, joins us on this episode to explain their background, and tells us about how their technology and some savvy business decisions resulted in them owning Open EBS, the most popular container-attached storage platform. Datacore is a software-defined storage product that virtualizing pretty much any kind of storage into any other kind of storage, giving you exactly what you need, without vendor lock-in. Join us on this podcast to hear what's special about Datacore.
Aug 15, 2022 · 45 min
M-disc founder explains how it keeps data for 1000 years
This week we have Barry Lunt, one of two founders of Milleniata, the creators of M-Disc. The company may be gone, but the format lives on. Most modern DVD and Blu-Ray drives can write to M-Disc, and Verbatim still sells it. Barry explains to us why they decided to make M-Disc, and why it's different than any other optical product. He also offers a shocker: a study done many years ago that shows that recordable DVDs are nowhere near as good at holding onto data as they claim. There is a lot of good info in this episode. Hope you like it.
Aug 8, 2022 · 41 min
The industry's first $10M data resiliency guarantee (From Druva)
Druva's new data resiliency guarantee covers more than any other guarantee in the data protection/data resilience segment. It also was written with no silly exclusions (like some other guarantees) that are simply there to keep from having to pay anyone. It requires only a certain service level and that the customer follows Druva's best practices. It protects against the five areas of risk, including cyber, human, application, operational, and environmental. It includes SLAs for uptime, backup success, restore success, immutability, and confidentiality. This week we have Stephen Manley, Druva's CTO, to tell us about this new guarantee. Check out the new guarantee here: https://www.druva.com/resilience-guarantee/
Aug 1, 2022 · 37 min
Warshipping: The latest trick in the bad actor's playbook
Warshipping is yet another way hackers are taking advantage of how the pandemic has changed the workplace. Did you know you could be hacked by UPS, Fedex, or the postal service? Warshipping is shipping a self-powered device in a package so that it arrives at your office and is left unattended. (It's sent to someone working from home.) The device then sits there, sniffing the wifi, and eventually cracking your WiFi network and attempting to steal secrets. This isn't science fiction; it's reality. It's enabled by so much remote work, and by technology such as the Raspberry Pi. Read all about it in this article in DarkReading.com: https://www.darkreading.com/edge-articles/i-built-a-cheap-warshipping-device-in-just-three-hours-and-so-can-you In this episode, Prasanna and Curtis discuss what this is, how it works, and what you need to do to stop this new attack vector.
Jul 25, 2022 · 51 min
Really inexpensive AND secure storage systems for backup
If you're one of those people that look at typical storage offerings for backup and recovery and say, "I can't afford this," you're not alone. A lot of ready-to-go storage solutions can get very expensive very quickly. Our guest this week (Erik Ableson from Infrageeks.com) ran into this a lot with his small-government customers and SMBs in France, and knew he had to get creative. He wanted to build a hardened Linux repository for Veeam backups, and he also wanted an S3 object storage system to serve as the second copy. His customers couldn't easily buy cloud services, so he needed something they could own and manage themselves. (He explains the unique reason they can't buy cloud services.) He built the Linux repository using a Synology box to run both the storage and a Linux VM, and he built the object storage system out of the free version of MinIO and what I will call a very unique build of hardware. Learn the details in this fun episode of a real practitioner's solution to a unique and challenging problem.
Jul 18, 2022 · 35 min
Using and backing up Hammerspace's global filesystem
Hammerspace offers a global filesystem that creates a single namespace across multiple storage systems and cloud storage providers. Hammerspace's name is inspired by the name for the magical place that cartoon characters get them from (e.g. Bugs Bunny pulling a huge hammer out of his pocket). They've taken a different approach to a global filesystem, using metadata to significantly minimize actual data movement and increase performance. Molly Presley, their SVP of Marketing (and friend of the pod!), explains the interesting use cases for this technology.
Jul 11, 2022 · 40 min
The Five Most Dangerous New Cyber Attack Techniques (A review of the RSA Keynote)
2022 is a new world in the cyber attack space, and Katie Nickels, SANS instructor, and director of intelligence at threat detection vendor Red Canary, describes the top five new attack they are seeing in the space. Spoiler alert: one of them is attacks against backups! Learn from an expert as we discuss the top five attacks they are seeing right now. We talk about living off the cloud, MFA exploits, an increase in nation-state hackers, the increased use of stalkerware, and YES: attacks against backup infrastructure. We discuss each of these in this important episode of Restore it All!
Jun 27, 2022 · 46 min
Is M-Disc the ultimate archive medium for SMBs and home users?
This week we talk about this exciting "new" medium for archiving data that is especially attractive to SMBs and home users. It's an optical disc that looks like a DVD and is readable in all Blu-Ray drives, but underneath it's something very different. If you haven't heard of it, then you're in luck! Thanks to Daniel Rosehill, backup anorak and friend of the show, we're going to talk about it – and its competitors on this week's episode! We discuss the good and bad about using all of the following for archiving: paper, SSD, disk, tape, DVD, Blu-Ray, ending with M-Disc. Learn what's wrong with these other mediums, and what's so great about this one in another fun episode of Restore it All!