1 00:00:00,189 --> 00:00:04,719 What actually is an air gap isn't even possible with backups 2 00:00:04,719 --> 00:00:06,609 stored on disk or in the cloud. 3 00:00:07,119 --> 00:00:11,349 Your backup product says that your backups are air gapped. 4 00:00:11,709 --> 00:00:14,829 By what standard can you even judge that statement? 5 00:00:15,339 --> 00:00:20,529 The answer to all of these questions goes back to my earliest days as a 6 00:00:20,529 --> 00:00:23,289 backup admin back in the early nineties. 7 00:00:23,619 --> 00:00:27,099 You know, back when we had an actual air gap. 8 00:00:27,549 --> 00:00:30,669 Once, you know, what a true air gap was like. 9 00:00:30,759 --> 00:00:35,019 I think I can explain how to use that as a standard to judge the 10 00:00:35,019 --> 00:00:37,239 virtual air gaps we have today. 11 00:00:37,869 --> 00:00:38,949 Hi, I'm W. 12 00:00:38,949 --> 00:00:40,719 Curtis Preston an AKA Mr. 13 00:00:40,719 --> 00:00:41,349 Backup. 14 00:00:41,559 --> 00:00:45,009 I've been a backup admin, consultant, analyst, and even 15 00:00:45,009 --> 00:00:46,599 a backup product evangelist. 16 00:00:47,049 --> 00:00:48,729 Backup is kind of my thing. 17 00:00:48,729 --> 00:00:50,889 And backup folks are my people. 18 00:00:51,279 --> 00:00:56,349 This podcast turns unappreciated backup admins into cyber recovery heroes. 19 00:00:56,679 --> 00:00:59,329 This is The Backup Wrap-Up. 20 00:01:11,865 --> 00:01:13,965 Welcome to the show and thanks for joining. 21 00:01:13,965 --> 00:01:23,525 Con, how's it going, Prasanna? 22 00:01:24,675 --> 00:01:26,895 I've been practicing my Spanish as you know. 23 00:01:29,685 --> 00:01:33,135 so, so for those that don't know, what I said, I just said with me as always, is 24 00:01:33,135 --> 00:01:39,795 my friend Prasanna Malaiyandi, who's been encouraging me in my language attempt. 25 00:01:39,800 --> 00:01:45,800 I'm spending a lot of time on the past tense, uh, and also on. 26 00:01:47,420 --> 00:01:50,570 Birthdays and ordering food 27 00:01:50,795 --> 00:01:52,325 Ordering food is important, you know. 28 00:01:53,300 --> 00:01:53,750 ordering. 29 00:01:53,840 --> 00:01:54,080 Yeah. 30 00:01:54,080 --> 00:01:58,760 The next, the next lesson is about, um, uh, renting a car. 31 00:01:59,105 --> 00:02:00,455 Ah, there you go. 32 00:02:00,560 --> 00:02:01,580 also very important. 33 00:02:01,730 --> 00:02:05,180 As you can see, they, they tend to, uh, focus on things that you 34 00:02:05,180 --> 00:02:06,890 might do while, while traveling, 35 00:02:07,025 --> 00:02:07,745 is good, right? 36 00:02:07,745 --> 00:02:10,205 Because it's important to have those skills. 37 00:02:11,485 --> 00:02:12,145 Exactly. 38 00:02:12,955 --> 00:02:19,051 Uh, so I wanna jump right into our news section and I, and I, I want to thank you. 39 00:02:19,051 --> 00:02:24,691 You found this story and it's from the National Cybersecurity Center. 40 00:02:24,991 --> 00:02:29,161 That center with an re in, uh, the uk. 41 00:02:29,701 --> 00:02:30,541 Um, 42 00:02:30,826 --> 00:02:31,696 That should have given it away. 43 00:02:31,696 --> 00:02:33,736 It's either gonna be the UK or Canada. 44 00:02:33,766 --> 00:02:34,456 So one of the two. 45 00:02:35,041 --> 00:02:38,581 yeah, uh, well, it could, could be Australia, we could, you know, 46 00:02:38,851 --> 00:02:43,741 could be that, but they put out, um, they have some new principles to 47 00:02:43,746 --> 00:02:46,411 make cloud backups more resilient. 48 00:02:46,441 --> 00:02:48,511 Why do you, why do you think they would've done that? 49 00:02:48,721 --> 00:02:54,091 Uh, because there's a lot of issues going around right now with, uh, 50 00:02:54,271 --> 00:02:56,761 people storing data in the cloud. 51 00:02:57,061 --> 00:03:01,531 Uh, but it's still being exposed either due to security issues or 52 00:03:01,531 --> 00:03:06,361 just improperly securing it, such that when you get hit by ransomware. 53 00:03:07,081 --> 00:03:10,231 They go and trash your backups and now you have nothing you can restore from. 54 00:03:10,441 --> 00:03:13,021 I think it goes back to what we've always talked about, Curtis, which is everyone 55 00:03:13,021 --> 00:03:16,801 thinks the cloud is magical and it's just gonna alleviate all their problems. 56 00:03:17,656 --> 00:03:21,376 I actually think that the cloud is like the best place where you can put your 57 00:03:21,381 --> 00:03:24,886 backups, and we could, I, I'd love to have somebody on that thinks that, that, 58 00:03:24,886 --> 00:03:27,136 well, I, I'm st I'm sticking with that. 59 00:03:27,826 --> 00:03:28,636 Uh, 60 00:03:28,701 --> 00:03:29,941 a good place to put it. 61 00:03:30,161 --> 00:03:30,381 Yes. 62 00:03:30,916 --> 00:03:35,836 I think it's the best place, uh, you know, with, with caveats. 63 00:03:35,836 --> 00:03:39,646 But, but, but it is not magic. 64 00:03:40,036 --> 00:03:44,836 Um, it does allow you to do things it simply aren't possible in a data center, 65 00:03:44,836 --> 00:03:46,906 which is why I have that opinion. 66 00:03:47,866 --> 00:03:54,136 But it, I'm talking about like cloud DR and stuff like that, but it's not magic 67 00:03:54,316 --> 00:03:59,746 and you have to, and I'm, I'm really glad to see them sort of acknowledge that and 68 00:03:59,746 --> 00:04:02,326 to give specific guidance on the use of, 69 00:04:02,456 --> 00:04:02,906 cloud. 70 00:04:04,331 --> 00:04:08,681 Cloud four backups now, you know, throw, throw out your, what? 71 00:04:08,681 --> 00:04:09,281 What's your thing? 72 00:04:09,281 --> 00:04:10,331 What, what are you saying? 73 00:04:10,361 --> 00:04:13,691 You like, you don't, you don't agree with me that it's the best place for backups? 74 00:04:14,246 --> 00:04:19,496 I agree as long as you're okay if you need to pull the data back down, 75 00:04:19,916 --> 00:04:23,066 for example, in your home, right? 76 00:04:23,516 --> 00:04:24,956 I know we've talked about this. 77 00:04:24,986 --> 00:04:26,966 You have issues running into your data cap 78 00:04:28,576 --> 00:04:28,996 mm-Hmm 79 00:04:29,246 --> 00:04:30,296 right at home. 80 00:04:30,536 --> 00:04:32,606 Imagine if you had something happened. 81 00:04:32,606 --> 00:04:35,216 You need to download all your data from the cloud because that's the 82 00:04:35,216 --> 00:04:36,266 only place you have your data. 83 00:04:37,331 --> 00:04:38,921 One, how long would it take you? 84 00:04:39,821 --> 00:04:40,361 Two. 85 00:04:40,421 --> 00:04:42,401 How many times would you end up hitting your data cap? 86 00:04:42,401 --> 00:04:43,781 Limit data usage limit 87 00:04:44,306 --> 00:04:44,726 mm-Hmm 88 00:04:45,701 --> 00:04:49,871 And is that reasonable for keeping your only copy in the cloud? 89 00:04:50,261 --> 00:04:54,341 I, that's why I think there are cases where cloud is perfect for keeping 90 00:04:54,341 --> 00:04:57,041 a copy because it is offsite, right? 91 00:04:57,041 --> 00:04:57,971 You don't have to worry about it. 92 00:04:57,971 --> 00:04:58,571 It's all there. 93 00:04:58,571 --> 00:05:00,401 It's really low cost. 94 00:05:01,196 --> 00:05:05,216 I think for important data and other things like that, it might be beneficial 95 00:05:05,216 --> 00:05:07,286 to keep something local as well. 96 00:05:07,826 --> 00:05:08,726 That was my only point. 97 00:05:08,966 --> 00:05:11,036 You said the best place for backup? 98 00:05:11,241 --> 00:05:14,391 After everything you just said, I'm sticking by my statement. 99 00:05:14,781 --> 00:05:18,531 I never, and I never said, don't have another copy. 100 00:05:19,026 --> 00:05:19,146 I. 101 00:05:19,506 --> 00:05:25,506 I'm just saying if I, if I was picking one and only one place, which I don't 102 00:05:25,506 --> 00:05:29,136 think you should do, but if I was picking one and only one place, I would much 103 00:05:29,136 --> 00:05:33,156 rather have it in the cloud than on a device sitting next to my computer. 104 00:05:33,651 --> 00:05:33,771 I. 105 00:05:33,786 --> 00:05:36,156 Uh, or in a dish drive, right? 106 00:05:36,156 --> 00:05:38,196 Plugged in, all that, all that stuff, right? 107 00:05:38,201 --> 00:05:41,466 I would just, and, and I, and I am thinking a lot about home users there. 108 00:05:41,646 --> 00:05:43,956 I really feel this way for home users. 109 00:05:44,316 --> 00:05:48,306 And, uh, the bigger you get, the the more challenging it becomes. 110 00:05:48,606 --> 00:05:52,566 But the, and again, I don't have any issue with having a 111 00:05:52,566 --> 00:05:54,756 local copy for quick restores. 112 00:05:54,756 --> 00:06:00,216 I just really think, like, again, if I only had one, only having a 113 00:06:00,216 --> 00:06:02,136 local copy is a really bad idea. 114 00:06:02,556 --> 00:06:02,706 I 115 00:06:02,751 --> 00:06:07,461 So having a, we want a remote copy, and I think that that remote 116 00:06:07,461 --> 00:06:08,601 copy should be in the cloud. 117 00:06:08,631 --> 00:06:15,201 I do not think it should be discs in a dis array, you know, in your data center. 118 00:06:15,201 --> 00:06:17,931 We can talk about, you know, again, I, I'm pro tape. 119 00:06:17,991 --> 00:06:19,041 I, I like tape. 120 00:06:19,401 --> 00:06:22,521 Uh, again, I wouldn't mind it being one of the copies. 121 00:06:22,576 --> 00:06:22,866 Yeah. 122 00:06:23,751 --> 00:06:27,381 I hope you don't need to use it because it's gonna take a while to get it back. 123 00:06:27,921 --> 00:06:29,361 But, uh, so, so, so 124 00:06:29,376 --> 00:06:29,706 Okay. 125 00:06:29,706 --> 00:06:30,096 I'm good. 126 00:06:30,096 --> 00:06:30,516 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 127 00:06:30,521 --> 00:06:31,116 I'm good now. 128 00:06:31,926 --> 00:06:36,336 Just wanna make sure that anyone listening does not think that Mr. 129 00:06:36,336 --> 00:06:39,216 Backup is not Yeah. 130 00:06:39,216 --> 00:06:41,141 Is just saying just go to the cloud for everything. 131 00:06:41,841 --> 00:06:42,111 yeah. 132 00:06:42,116 --> 00:06:43,516 I'm not, I'm not, um. 133 00:06:44,886 --> 00:06:46,656 I'm not against local copies. 134 00:06:47,256 --> 00:06:53,316 Um, I just, I'm against that as your only option and when, yeah. 135 00:06:53,376 --> 00:06:53,766 Okay. 136 00:06:54,276 --> 00:06:59,796 Um, so, and of all the options, I still prefer the, the remote again, 137 00:06:59,796 --> 00:07:01,596 I still think it's the best option. 138 00:07:01,996 --> 00:07:04,576 All of the options have downsides. 139 00:07:05,446 --> 00:07:05,896 Right. 140 00:07:06,286 --> 00:07:08,986 But the downside to the cloud, if done right, which 141 00:07:08,986 --> 00:07:10,366 is what this article is about. 142 00:07:11,776 --> 00:07:15,646 Is that at least it wouldn't get deleted on you. 143 00:07:15,916 --> 00:07:16,366 Right. 144 00:07:16,816 --> 00:07:21,586 But, but like the, the local one, it could also be done poorly, which 145 00:07:21,586 --> 00:07:22,786 is what this article is about. 146 00:07:22,966 --> 00:07:27,406 So this is a, this is an interesting, uh, so let's just review real quick. 147 00:07:27,736 --> 00:07:30,436 'cause it's, it's, it's kind of, we're, we're gonna come back to that. 148 00:07:30,706 --> 00:07:34,696 They have five principles for ransomware resilient cloud backups. 149 00:07:34,696 --> 00:07:37,936 The first principle is it should be resilient to destructive actions. 150 00:07:38,206 --> 00:07:38,656 Right? 151 00:07:38,866 --> 00:07:39,706 I I like that. 152 00:07:39,711 --> 00:07:40,036 Right? 153 00:07:40,066 --> 00:07:43,756 Um, that, yeah, that, that you should, that deletions 154 00:07:43,756 --> 00:07:44,956 shouldn't really be deletions. 155 00:07:44,961 --> 00:07:46,486 There should be soft delete and things like that. 156 00:07:46,486 --> 00:07:49,696 A backup system shouldn't, should be configured so that it's, it's not 157 00:07:49,696 --> 00:07:52,246 possible to deny all customer access. 158 00:07:52,516 --> 00:07:54,616 So if you lose your internet service, right. 159 00:07:55,461 --> 00:07:56,251 We'll come back to that. 160 00:07:56,475 --> 00:07:56,595 Yeah. 161 00:07:56,595 --> 00:07:57,465 We'll come back to that. 162 00:07:57,465 --> 00:08:02,170 But basically when your infrastructure is down, um, I. 163 00:08:02,400 --> 00:08:06,660 It shouldn't rely on your infrastructure to get in that this, we have talked 164 00:08:06,660 --> 00:08:10,500 about this in that I do think that your authentication authorization system for 165 00:08:10,500 --> 00:08:12,030 your backup system should be separate. 166 00:08:12,600 --> 00:08:17,070 Uh, principle three, the service allows a customer to restore from a backup version 167 00:08:17,100 --> 00:08:19,110 even if later versions become corrupted. 168 00:08:19,560 --> 00:08:25,290 This, I mean, this should be, uh, this is what backups are. 169 00:08:25,350 --> 00:08:28,830 You should always go back to previous versions, but I think, again, 170 00:08:28,920 --> 00:08:30,750 this is talking about bad design. 171 00:08:31,135 --> 00:08:34,735 In previous episodes, we've talked about the difference between, uh, 172 00:08:34,825 --> 00:08:38,845 um, replication, and one of the problems with replication is that 173 00:08:38,845 --> 00:08:40,615 the, the backup becomes corrupted. 174 00:08:40,645 --> 00:08:43,585 I think what they're saying here is, yeah, it's nice to have a copy in the 175 00:08:43,585 --> 00:08:47,575 cloud, but if that copy gets corrupted, hopefully you have other versions of that. 176 00:08:48,055 --> 00:08:51,535 Uh, four robust key management for data at rest. 177 00:08:51,595 --> 00:08:53,125 Uh, yes, I'm with that. 178 00:08:53,125 --> 00:08:54,445 Encryption, encryption, encryption. 179 00:08:54,960 --> 00:08:59,760 Three rules of cloud backups, uh, and then also alerts, uh, triggered 180 00:08:59,760 --> 00:09:01,410 if significant changes are made. 181 00:09:01,410 --> 00:09:02,550 I like that a lot. 182 00:09:02,880 --> 00:09:04,530 So we're gonna, we're gonna back to this. 183 00:09:04,590 --> 00:09:05,160 What, go ahead. 184 00:09:05,370 --> 00:09:07,110 Yeah, no, I, I was reading it. 185 00:09:07,110 --> 00:09:11,040 I was like, that's a lot of what we talked about, but also some bits that we 186 00:09:11,250 --> 00:09:13,230 don't always talk about on the podcast. 187 00:09:13,230 --> 00:09:17,700 I know maybe when we had snorkel 42, we might have touched on some of these. 188 00:09:17,790 --> 00:09:18,120 But 189 00:09:18,585 --> 00:09:18,875 Yeah. 190 00:09:19,260 --> 00:09:20,820 yeah, it was a good list. 191 00:09:20,825 --> 00:09:24,895 And the other thing I liked about this article is they also split 192 00:09:25,020 --> 00:09:30,360 it out into sort of, sort of how do you deal with ransomware? 193 00:09:30,360 --> 00:09:32,220 Like how do you build your infrastructure? 194 00:09:32,220 --> 00:09:33,270 And then also. 195 00:09:33,525 --> 00:09:37,305 Yeah, A lot of times we struggle because sometimes it's, Hey, for 196 00:09:37,305 --> 00:09:40,245 enterprises, you have all the budget, you have all the tools. 197 00:09:40,245 --> 00:09:43,815 You have all the resources like people and expertise, but 198 00:09:43,815 --> 00:09:45,195 smaller businesses you don't. 199 00:09:45,195 --> 00:09:49,905 And so as part of the set of articles, they also publish one for like SMBs 200 00:09:49,910 --> 00:09:51,525 and how to protect your environment. 201 00:09:52,635 --> 00:09:53,115 Right. 202 00:09:53,385 --> 00:09:53,625 Yeah. 203 00:09:53,625 --> 00:09:57,375 And speaking of which, um, they said that this article, it specifically said, 204 00:09:57,555 --> 00:09:59,655 we're not gonna tell you how to back up. 205 00:10:00,225 --> 00:10:00,495 Right? 206 00:10:00,495 --> 00:10:04,305 They're just saying there are a bunch of different ways to get a copy in the cloud. 207 00:10:04,305 --> 00:10:06,555 They're just saying if you're gonna have a copy in the cloud, 208 00:10:06,885 --> 00:10:08,175 you need to make sure that it. 209 00:10:08,495 --> 00:10:12,665 Is protected, it's resilient against ransomware attacks because as we have 210 00:10:12,845 --> 00:10:17,765 often mentioned, the, your backups are just as big a target, if not a bigger 211 00:10:17,765 --> 00:10:20,765 target than the your primary copy. 212 00:10:20,770 --> 00:10:26,465 In fact, the, you know, I, I mentioned it on a blog I wrote the other day, 213 00:10:26,470 --> 00:10:31,235 was that, that that Veeam uh, survey that, you know, I call it the Veeam 214 00:10:31,235 --> 00:10:34,715 survey, but they actually, uh, and I don't think we explained enough when 215 00:10:34,715 --> 00:10:36,665 we did the episode on it that it was a. 216 00:10:36,960 --> 00:10:42,540 Double blind survey, uh, of like a thousand companies, I think. 217 00:10:42,870 --> 00:10:45,690 And they said that, uh, and they weren't. 218 00:10:45,975 --> 00:10:48,480 I, I, I think I may have assumed that it was Veeam customers. 219 00:10:48,480 --> 00:10:51,870 It wasn't Veeam customers that it was something like I. 220 00:10:52,455 --> 00:10:57,735 Uh, that backups were targeted in like 85% of the attacks. 221 00:10:58,065 --> 00:11:00,405 So you've got to do this. 222 00:11:00,555 --> 00:11:03,345 And that is, we're gonna make a, a quick switch. 223 00:11:03,555 --> 00:11:06,375 Uh, we're, we're gonna, we're gonna call that the news section. 224 00:11:07,825 --> 00:11:09,150 And that's the news. 225 00:11:13,603 --> 00:11:17,473 And then we're gonna just move right into what I wanted to talk about. 226 00:11:17,473 --> 00:11:20,323 It just, it, it's, you know, I, we were looking for news articles and 227 00:11:20,323 --> 00:11:24,583 you found this article and it's absolutely perfect for what I wanted 228 00:11:24,588 --> 00:11:25,963 to talk about on this episode. 229 00:11:26,693 --> 00:11:30,713 We've talked about this before, but I want to talk about it in a different way 230 00:11:30,713 --> 00:11:33,263 now, and that is this concept of air gap. 231 00:11:33,873 --> 00:11:38,343 So I wanted to take people, especially people like you, persona, 232 00:11:38,403 --> 00:11:39,453 Back in the day. 233 00:11:40,078 --> 00:11:42,393 that never, that never touched the tape. 234 00:11:42,483 --> 00:11:47,493 Uh, you know, you never fired a tape in anger to, to back 235 00:11:47,643 --> 00:11:50,043 when we had an actual air gap. 236 00:11:50,313 --> 00:11:52,623 That the term has a very specific. 237 00:11:53,268 --> 00:11:56,268 Definition, a history, a connotation. 238 00:11:56,778 --> 00:11:59,628 And it comes from back in the day. 239 00:12:00,288 --> 00:12:06,078 So again, for those of you that are, that are NIT, and you're, you know, 240 00:12:06,083 --> 00:12:11,688 maybe you've grown up in this world of disc only backups, that is a lot of you. 241 00:12:12,378 --> 00:12:18,138 And so I wanted to just give you a, like a, a lesson of what 242 00:12:18,138 --> 00:12:21,648 it was like to do backups back. 243 00:12:22,473 --> 00:12:25,173 In, in the, in the mid nineties. 244 00:12:25,878 --> 00:12:26,088 Well, 245 00:12:27,033 --> 00:12:29,013 What were you, what were you doing in the mid nineties? 246 00:12:29,013 --> 00:12:29,673 Persona 247 00:12:29,868 --> 00:12:33,618 I might have been in elementary school. 248 00:12:34,203 --> 00:12:35,943 element Elementary school. 249 00:12:36,678 --> 00:12:37,308 No, probably middle 250 00:12:37,503 --> 00:12:38,193 That's great. 251 00:12:38,823 --> 00:12:39,573 That's great. 252 00:12:39,843 --> 00:12:41,073 Uh, well, it's okay. 253 00:12:41,073 --> 00:12:43,983 I'm, I'm, I'm feeling, I'm actually feeling young today 254 00:12:43,983 --> 00:12:45,273 because I was talking to. 255 00:12:45,663 --> 00:12:51,003 Uh, our friend of the pod Stewart, and he was telling me how he joined 256 00:12:51,003 --> 00:12:55,113 the Air Force, like he enlisted in the Air Force the day before 257 00:12:55,118 --> 00:12:56,883 his draft number was called. 258 00:12:57,513 --> 00:13:01,623 Um, and so, which means he is a lot older than me, is 259 00:13:01,743 --> 00:13:05,463 You just need to hang around with people who are older than you all the time, 260 00:13:05,468 --> 00:13:06,633 and that way you always feel young. 261 00:13:06,663 --> 00:13:07,503 That's why I hang out with 262 00:13:07,568 --> 00:13:08,308 to feel young. 263 00:13:08,523 --> 00:13:10,263 Yeah, yeah, exactly. 264 00:13:13,668 --> 00:13:14,148 Nice. 265 00:13:14,148 --> 00:13:14,688 Nice. 266 00:13:14,688 --> 00:13:15,558 I see what you did there. 267 00:13:15,774 --> 00:13:28,107 let me go back to the, you know, back to the time and what we had at our, 268 00:13:29,277 --> 00:13:37,527 at our sort of technological height in that data center was we had a bunch of. 269 00:13:38,457 --> 00:13:40,377 Spectra Logic Tape Libraries. 270 00:13:40,827 --> 00:13:43,437 They were, they were, their, their, I think they call 'em, they 271 00:13:43,437 --> 00:13:44,817 started calling 'em Tree Frogs. 272 00:13:44,817 --> 00:13:48,297 We didn't call 'em that, but basically they were like, I 273 00:13:48,302 --> 00:13:49,227 don't know how many u was that? 274 00:13:49,227 --> 00:13:50,577 Like three U High? 275 00:13:50,637 --> 00:13:51,537 Something like that. 276 00:13:52,437 --> 00:13:59,397 And inside was a carousel and they were, I think four DDS 277 00:13:59,397 --> 00:14:00,927 tape drives in that carousel. 278 00:14:01,902 --> 00:14:06,132 Then the robot rotated like in the middle. 279 00:14:06,252 --> 00:14:07,842 It didn't have to move, it just rotated. 280 00:14:07,842 --> 00:14:11,862 And it would take a, it would take a tape from a slot on that carousel 281 00:14:11,867 --> 00:14:15,222 and then slightly rotate and then put that tape in the tape drive. 282 00:14:16,092 --> 00:14:22,932 And then there was a door on the front that was basically the ejection port. 283 00:14:23,052 --> 00:14:23,442 Right? 284 00:14:24,102 --> 00:14:25,302 Uh, similar. 285 00:14:25,632 --> 00:14:29,652 Uh, you know, fancier more expensive units like from storage tech. 286 00:14:29,652 --> 00:14:32,322 You again, you, you had a robot that was in the middle that would 287 00:14:32,322 --> 00:14:34,812 turn around and then we grab the tapes and put 'em in the tape drive. 288 00:14:35,202 --> 00:14:41,472 But then you actually had like, um, you had a, a, a cartridge, I dunno what the, 289 00:14:41,532 --> 00:14:46,602 I dunno what we called that, but basically there was this unit that sat in the door 290 00:14:47,262 --> 00:14:53,232 that the robot could actually put like 10 tapes in that, in that removable. 291 00:14:54,792 --> 00:14:55,452 Carrier, 292 00:14:55,452 --> 00:14:56,292 I don't, I don't remember what 293 00:14:56,292 --> 00:14:56,892 we called it. 294 00:14:57,682 --> 00:15:00,592 And we'd take it out and there would be like 10 tapes in that, and then you could, 295 00:15:00,892 --> 00:15:02,572 you could move that around as a unit. 296 00:15:03,052 --> 00:15:07,582 Um, but, but basically the principle was the same that you, you had a robot that 297 00:15:07,582 --> 00:15:11,932 moved the tapes around and then you had the ability to eject specific tapes. 298 00:15:12,382 --> 00:15:16,972 And the way we did it, again, proper backup design, you always have two copies, 299 00:15:17,272 --> 00:15:19,642 so we would make a backup copy two. 300 00:15:20,047 --> 00:15:25,627 Tapes that were in that tape library, and then we would copy those tapes or those 301 00:15:25,627 --> 00:15:31,447 backups to other tapes, which then at the end of the night, we would then spit 302 00:15:31,447 --> 00:15:35,197 those tapes out into that ejection port. 303 00:15:35,437 --> 00:15:40,987 And then we would have, uh, if I could, I don't remember how many tapes it was, 304 00:15:41,287 --> 00:15:47,437 but it, I, I know that it fit in like a, a storage bin that was like six inch. 305 00:15:47,437 --> 00:15:48,067 What's that? 306 00:15:48,112 --> 00:15:50,002 like I was gonna say, like a cardboard box. 307 00:15:50,922 --> 00:15:54,037 No, no, it was a plastic, it was like one of those plastic things 308 00:15:54,037 --> 00:15:56,977 with the lids that, that, that, that, yeah, the totes that the, 309 00:15:56,982 --> 00:15:59,827 the lid is like part of the unit. 310 00:15:59,917 --> 00:16:00,307 Right. 311 00:16:00,757 --> 00:16:03,067 So you, you'd open it up, you'd put the tapes in. 312 00:16:03,337 --> 00:16:07,387 Uh, I don't even think we, um, I mean, you would put the tapes inside. 313 00:16:07,387 --> 00:16:11,227 There was a, a holder that each tape was held, so that tape, the tape 314 00:16:11,227 --> 00:16:15,607 itself physically secure, and then you put those tapes inside a, um. 315 00:16:16,387 --> 00:16:23,857 This, this tote and then you would, um, we had a barcode scanner and I, I don't 316 00:16:23,862 --> 00:16:26,947 know, so I'll just stop there 'cause this is, you know, it's kind of a long story. 317 00:16:27,097 --> 00:16:32,047 So does any of that, did you learn anything from any of that? 318 00:16:32,167 --> 00:16:34,507 Yeah, you basically had two copies. 319 00:16:34,897 --> 00:16:39,817 And they were never always in the device itself that was easily accessible. 320 00:16:39,817 --> 00:16:43,417 It was kind of stored separately, and then you had one copy separated out 321 00:16:43,777 --> 00:16:46,447 that you could keep somewhere else if you decided to move it off site or 322 00:16:46,447 --> 00:16:47,707 whatever else you wanted to do with it. 323 00:16:48,547 --> 00:16:49,297 Right, right. 324 00:16:49,297 --> 00:16:53,797 So again, the key is again, separate these two copies as much as you can. 325 00:16:54,967 --> 00:16:58,837 So we would put those copies and, and every tape had a barcode 326 00:16:59,617 --> 00:17:05,947 and we had a barcode scanner, and we had a database that. 327 00:17:06,652 --> 00:17:09,082 Um, it was an Informix database. 328 00:17:10,682 --> 00:17:15,122 We had a custom built app where I could scan all of the barcodes of all of the 329 00:17:15,122 --> 00:17:17,972 tapes that were going into today's tote. 330 00:17:18,842 --> 00:17:21,122 And then that would create like a pick list. 331 00:17:21,692 --> 00:17:25,412 And, um, that would, well it's not really a pick list, but it, 332 00:17:25,412 --> 00:17:28,682 it was a list of the tapes that, that were going in today's tote. 333 00:17:29,402 --> 00:17:34,772 And then that list would go in the, the, the, the tote. 334 00:17:35,282 --> 00:17:37,022 And then we had a guy from Iron Mountain. 335 00:17:37,757 --> 00:17:40,967 Um, sometimes the guy was, was a girl, right. 336 00:17:41,182 --> 00:17:42,707 Sometimes it wasn't always, it 337 00:17:42,887 --> 00:17:43,487 It was a man in the 338 00:17:43,517 --> 00:17:44,477 Sometimes it was a woman. 339 00:17:44,957 --> 00:17:46,967 Yeah, it was a, but yeah, we used the term man in the van. 340 00:17:46,967 --> 00:17:51,797 There was a man in the van that came and picked up our tapes and they 341 00:17:51,797 --> 00:17:58,517 would, um, they would scan the tapes, like as they're picking them up. 342 00:17:58,517 --> 00:17:59,987 So we had like receipts. 343 00:18:00,347 --> 00:18:03,647 We had like an electronic receipt that they had picked up our 344 00:18:03,647 --> 00:18:08,777 tapes, and then when they got to the actual physical location. 345 00:18:09,077 --> 00:18:10,727 By the way, here's a little piece of trivia. 346 00:18:11,627 --> 00:18:15,557 How do you, it's a, it's a trick question really. 347 00:18:15,947 --> 00:18:21,407 How do you spot Iron Mountain Vans with tapes in them? 348 00:18:27,197 --> 00:18:28,787 The giant logo on the side. 349 00:18:29,792 --> 00:18:30,632 No. 350 00:18:30,752 --> 00:18:32,432 See, I told you it was a trick question. 351 00:18:32,972 --> 00:18:36,392 If Iron Mountain, if I, if you have vans that have the Iron Mountain 352 00:18:36,392 --> 00:18:38,402 logo that has paper inside. 353 00:18:39,242 --> 00:18:44,552 The, the tape, the, the vans that transported media did not have, 354 00:18:44,732 --> 00:18:45,902 they were not branded at all. 355 00:18:47,372 --> 00:18:50,012 And then they would go to the Iron Mountain facility and then 356 00:18:50,017 --> 00:18:53,822 the, the, you could, there, there were two ways to do it. 357 00:18:53,822 --> 00:18:58,052 We did it the more secure way you could put a barcode on the tote and 358 00:18:58,052 --> 00:18:59,642 just not let them open the tote. 359 00:19:00,302 --> 00:19:04,712 But what we did was we had them open the tote and then scan each barcode. 360 00:19:05,297 --> 00:19:07,847 Into a shelf that it had a slot. 361 00:19:07,967 --> 00:19:08,357 Right? 362 00:19:08,357 --> 00:19:12,647 And they would scan, like there was a barcode next to the slot, you know, 363 00:19:12,647 --> 00:19:15,047 And then there was a barcode on the tape and they would scan it. 364 00:19:15,047 --> 00:19:17,807 So they could, they could, we could say we need, we need tape 365 00:19:17,807 --> 00:19:19,757 number, you know, A, B, C 1, 2, 3. 366 00:19:19,937 --> 00:19:22,847 And they had a computer that would tell 'em exactly where that was in the vault 367 00:19:22,847 --> 00:19:24,797 and they could send us just that tape. 368 00:19:25,097 --> 00:19:28,367 'cause the other way is if you needed a tape that was in a particular tote, 369 00:19:28,367 --> 00:19:29,927 you had to bring back the entire tote. 370 00:19:30,747 --> 00:19:34,227 So they would scan in each of these tapes, and then we got an elect. 371 00:19:34,287 --> 00:19:38,397 We had an electronic connection to, it was very cutting edge really 372 00:19:38,397 --> 00:19:40,737 for, for, for early nineties. 373 00:19:41,187 --> 00:19:44,637 But we had, uh, an electronic connection to Iron Mountain. 374 00:19:44,997 --> 00:19:49,257 We would get notification that tapes had been scanned in, and then 375 00:19:49,257 --> 00:19:51,597 we had a system that would, um. 376 00:19:52,107 --> 00:19:56,217 Basically double check their list of tapes that have been scanned in to our list of 377 00:19:56,222 --> 00:19:57,837 tapes that they should have scanned in. 378 00:19:58,377 --> 00:20:02,187 And one time out of a thousand 379 00:20:02,817 --> 00:20:03,117 There's a 380 00:20:03,237 --> 00:20:06,657 might be a discrepancy, there would be a missing, uh, tape. 381 00:20:06,987 --> 00:20:11,667 And it was always found, but it was, it was, you know, we, we were 382 00:20:11,672 --> 00:20:16,257 notified immediately that they did not know where one of our tapes were. 383 00:20:16,257 --> 00:20:19,707 So again, the principle there is to find out. 384 00:20:20,112 --> 00:20:21,822 The problem before you need the tape. 385 00:20:22,182 --> 00:20:22,962 Exactly. 386 00:20:24,252 --> 00:20:24,762 Right. 387 00:20:24,912 --> 00:20:27,192 Um, that, that's pretty cool. 388 00:20:27,192 --> 00:20:29,742 Don't you think of like all that stuff that we did back in the day. 389 00:20:31,272 --> 00:20:36,192 Yes, and I would not wanna be the person maintaining that system of 390 00:20:36,192 --> 00:20:40,782 just data transfer back and forth and trying to keep these things in sync. 391 00:20:40,782 --> 00:20:40,812 I. 392 00:20:42,537 --> 00:20:43,077 Yeah. 393 00:20:43,167 --> 00:20:47,667 Um, and then of course they had the reverse process when they would, they 394 00:20:47,667 --> 00:20:52,347 had to scan the tapes out of their vault into a tote, and then, and then 395 00:20:52,347 --> 00:20:55,677 we would scan them back into our system. 396 00:20:55,857 --> 00:20:56,247 Right. 397 00:20:56,787 --> 00:20:59,757 And then they just, the, the barcodes didn't change. 398 00:20:59,757 --> 00:21:02,187 The barcode was part of the actual tape. 399 00:21:02,937 --> 00:21:08,307 And then, um, it would just go into the, essentially back into a drawer. 400 00:21:08,847 --> 00:21:09,717 Um. 401 00:21:09,762 --> 00:21:10,487 or whatever else. 402 00:21:11,007 --> 00:21:11,907 Then reused. 403 00:21:11,907 --> 00:21:12,357 Right. 404 00:21:12,777 --> 00:21:19,767 And the, the, the key, and then the other part, and I think, I think I've 405 00:21:19,767 --> 00:21:26,997 talked to you about this before, is we then did pen testing against our own 406 00:21:27,162 --> 00:21:27,577 Oh yeah. 407 00:21:28,047 --> 00:21:28,497 Right? 408 00:21:28,587 --> 00:21:30,387 So that's, that's penetration testing. 409 00:21:30,867 --> 00:21:33,837 So we did physical penetration testing, we. 410 00:21:34,557 --> 00:21:39,207 Uh, would send people that weren't authorized to be in the vault, to go over 411 00:21:39,207 --> 00:21:41,097 to the vault to see if they could get in. 412 00:21:41,097 --> 00:21:43,527 They always, they always had some crazy story. 413 00:21:44,187 --> 00:21:47,997 Um, and we, you know, we had rules. 414 00:21:48,002 --> 00:21:50,907 It was like, you, you just can't, you can't ever let someone who 415 00:21:50,907 --> 00:21:52,347 isn't on the list into the vault. 416 00:21:52,377 --> 00:21:52,737 Right. 417 00:21:53,307 --> 00:21:58,467 Um, and we would concoct stories to, 418 00:21:58,557 --> 00:21:59,247 they need to be in 419 00:21:59,307 --> 00:22:01,617 um, of why we need to be there. 420 00:22:01,647 --> 00:22:02,697 So we would either send. 421 00:22:03,552 --> 00:22:06,732 A person who wasn't authorized to be there, or we would send somebody that 422 00:22:06,732 --> 00:22:15,132 they knew like me and I'm over there with this massive inconvenient like, 423 00:22:15,192 --> 00:22:18,192 pick list and it's gonna take hours. 424 00:22:18,792 --> 00:22:21,642 Uh, you know, and it's one tape, you know, out of, you know, and the 425 00:22:21,642 --> 00:22:25,362 idea was what I'm trying to get them to do is to leave me alone in the 426 00:22:25,362 --> 00:22:28,062 vault with other people's media. 427 00:22:30,447 --> 00:22:32,097 Um, that never happened. 428 00:22:32,097 --> 00:22:32,277 I'm, 429 00:22:32,282 --> 00:22:35,697 I'm glad, I'm glad to tell you that not that never happened. 430 00:22:36,117 --> 00:22:41,937 Um, and we didn't ever, I, I, I, as I recall, like our, our, none of 431 00:22:41,937 --> 00:22:43,497 our pen tests ever actually worked. 432 00:22:43,497 --> 00:22:43,797 Right. 433 00:22:43,802 --> 00:22:44,907 But we, but we, but we 434 00:22:45,132 --> 00:22:45,702 You tried? 435 00:22:45,747 --> 00:22:47,187 on a semi-regular basis. 436 00:22:47,187 --> 00:22:47,457 Yeah. 437 00:22:48,057 --> 00:22:53,337 Um, but the, um, I'm just trying to think if there's anything, any 438 00:22:53,337 --> 00:22:57,177 element of that, that you know, and so when we needed a tape. 439 00:22:58,332 --> 00:23:02,772 We sent an electronic request, I think we, we could probably call, we could 440 00:23:02,772 --> 00:23:06,762 probably call and we could say, Hey, we need tape, we need tape A, B, C, 1, 2, 3. 441 00:23:07,332 --> 00:23:12,192 And they would, um, they would then bring that, that, that tape back. 442 00:23:12,792 --> 00:23:16,122 Um, I will say that this process was not perfect. 443 00:23:16,547 --> 00:23:20,412 I, I think our process was as good as it could have been. 444 00:23:20,652 --> 00:23:24,402 We knew when our tapes got scanned in, we knew when our tapes got scanned out. 445 00:23:24,882 --> 00:23:26,532 We knew when they were in transit. 446 00:23:27,012 --> 00:23:31,392 We knew, um, you know, we, we just basically knew and, and there were 447 00:23:31,392 --> 00:23:34,002 glitches where sometimes there would be a tape that would be in 448 00:23:34,002 --> 00:23:37,572 limbo and it always got found right. 449 00:23:38,382 --> 00:23:44,892 Um, not everybody had that level of, um, what's 450 00:23:45,177 --> 00:23:46,767 Integration sophistication. 451 00:23:47,682 --> 00:23:50,922 Yeah, sophistication, I think would be a great word because 452 00:23:50,982 --> 00:23:54,672 sometimes, especially people that went by the tote method, right? 453 00:23:54,672 --> 00:23:56,712 They just put a bunch of tapes in the tote, they don't really have 454 00:23:56,712 --> 00:23:58,332 any tracking for individual tapes. 455 00:23:59,022 --> 00:24:07,812 I remember, um, at a consulting company that I used to work at that 456 00:24:07,842 --> 00:24:13,392 they got a box of tapes, um, from. 457 00:24:14,697 --> 00:24:22,647 A leading media management storage company, and it, it wasn't their tapes. 458 00:24:23,517 --> 00:24:33,597 And, and then they called their rep for this company and the rep, like, typed 459 00:24:33,597 --> 00:24:37,107 and said, you know, looked up the, like, the barcodes of the tapes and whatnot. 460 00:24:37,917 --> 00:24:40,827 And, uh, the rep said. 461 00:24:41,532 --> 00:24:43,422 Uh, yeah, I don't know who those tapes are. 462 00:24:43,422 --> 00:24:43,572 Go. 463 00:24:43,572 --> 00:24:44,742 You can go ahead and keep 'em and 464 00:24:44,997 --> 00:24:45,237 What. 465 00:24:47,202 --> 00:24:48,312 Wow. 466 00:24:48,342 --> 00:24:51,012 like I said, it wasn't perfect. 467 00:24:51,762 --> 00:24:55,362 Uh, so you could misconfigure things back then just like 468 00:24:55,362 --> 00:24:56,832 you misconfigure things now. 469 00:24:57,282 --> 00:25:02,637 But the key takeaway here is that when the feces hits the 470 00:25:02,637 --> 00:25:07,437 rotary oscillator, the, the. 471 00:25:08,022 --> 00:25:14,022 The tapes, the backups were in a physically separate location using a 472 00:25:14,022 --> 00:25:17,562 completely different authentication and authorization system. 473 00:25:18,192 --> 00:25:18,612 Right? 474 00:25:18,702 --> 00:25:21,342 You couldn't hack them to save your life. 475 00:25:21,342 --> 00:25:26,142 There was no way, there was literally no process to like there, send an 476 00:25:26,142 --> 00:25:30,882 electronic request to have those tapes to anything to be done with those tapes. 477 00:25:31,332 --> 00:25:35,322 It was always a human in the way. 478 00:25:35,772 --> 00:25:37,482 could, could they not? 479 00:25:37,902 --> 00:25:38,232 Sorry? 480 00:25:38,232 --> 00:25:41,082 Could a mischievous hacker 481 00:25:41,967 --> 00:25:42,507 Mm-Hmm. 482 00:25:43,602 --> 00:25:47,997 fake up an electronic request to request all your tapes back? 483 00:25:49,122 --> 00:25:53,892 They could, but those requests were always verified in person. 484 00:25:53,922 --> 00:25:56,802 They were very, they were very, very rare. 485 00:25:57,042 --> 00:26:01,422 Anything, anything outside of the tapes coming back at 486 00:26:01,422 --> 00:26:03,312 their normal expiration date. 487 00:26:03,342 --> 00:26:05,982 'cause that, that's what I was describing earlier was, you know, 488 00:26:05,982 --> 00:26:07,572 we had like a six week retention. 489 00:26:08,157 --> 00:26:12,447 At six weeks, a box would come back and we would send them a new box. 490 00:26:12,452 --> 00:26:14,697 So we had six weeks worth of, of tapes over there. 491 00:26:15,477 --> 00:26:19,017 Anything outside of that was really, really rare 492 00:26:19,527 --> 00:26:26,817 and, uh, had all kinds of controls put around it to make sure that a single rogue 493 00:26:26,817 --> 00:26:33,237 employee, uh, can't do what, you know, uh, again, you had, you know what, what? 494 00:26:33,852 --> 00:26:39,942 You know, we call it, um, like four eyes, um, authentication, right? 495 00:26:39,942 --> 00:26:43,062 You had to have two people do it and, and things like that. 496 00:26:43,482 --> 00:26:49,452 Um, but the, the key here it is just that we talk about this phrase, air gap 497 00:26:49,452 --> 00:26:53,592 just gets thrown around, uh, so much. 498 00:26:53,652 --> 00:26:56,682 And so I just, I thought it would be interesting to just say 499 00:26:56,682 --> 00:27:00,042 that is the standard by which I. 500 00:27:01,737 --> 00:27:04,917 Measuring something that is calling itself an air gap. 501 00:27:04,967 --> 00:27:06,437 Which I think totally makes sense. 502 00:27:06,437 --> 00:27:12,797 Now I have a question though, for, so imagine that you weren't shipping 503 00:27:12,797 --> 00:27:14,357 the tapes off to Iron Mountain, 504 00:27:15,182 --> 00:27:15,602 Mm-Hmm 505 00:27:15,797 --> 00:27:16,157 right? 506 00:27:16,187 --> 00:27:17,117 You had. 507 00:27:17,657 --> 00:27:22,247 Your tape library, it was creating tapes. 508 00:27:22,247 --> 00:27:24,347 It would pull the tape out, put it in a separate spot. 509 00:27:24,857 --> 00:27:27,707 Do you consider that air gap or based on 510 00:27:27,712 --> 00:27:27,947 your 511 00:27:28,172 --> 00:27:33,932 because it's in the same, because it's in the same place as the primary. 512 00:27:34,142 --> 00:27:35,582 If it's just pulled out. 513 00:27:35,642 --> 00:27:39,992 If it's just like, uh, if let's say, 'cause I, I've seen people do this. 514 00:27:40,472 --> 00:27:47,762 They've got two robots and, uh, I remember like having, um, some people would have 515 00:27:47,762 --> 00:27:51,422 a tape library in this building and a tape library in this building, and they 516 00:27:51,422 --> 00:27:56,222 had a fiber channel san, and so they had enough bandwidth that they could copy from 517 00:27:56,222 --> 00:28:00,302 this tape library to that tape library, and they thought of that as an air gap. 518 00:28:00,752 --> 00:28:04,352 And I'm like, I can sit here on my keyboard and delete every one of 519 00:28:04,352 --> 00:28:06,752 those tapes over in that tape library. 520 00:28:06,812 --> 00:28:07,892 That's not an air gap. 521 00:28:08,297 --> 00:28:11,957 The, yeah, so the reason I bring this up is I think going back to what you're 522 00:28:11,957 --> 00:28:17,417 saying, a lot of people think air gap just means no physical connectivity. 523 00:28:17,447 --> 00:28:19,577 It's offline, it's not accessible. 524 00:28:20,207 --> 00:28:20,537 Right? 525 00:28:20,567 --> 00:28:24,677 Where, and I think what you're saying is that's part of the definition, 526 00:28:24,677 --> 00:28:27,977 but really the other part is you have the controls in place. 527 00:28:27,977 --> 00:28:32,657 You have a separate sort of communications channel and con to be able to pull the 528 00:28:32,657 --> 00:28:34,277 data back and other things like that. 529 00:28:35,432 --> 00:28:35,852 Right. 530 00:28:35,852 --> 00:28:36,122 Yeah. 531 00:28:36,127 --> 00:28:40,982 So, you know, you and I were joking about little Indian and Big Indian, the, uh, 532 00:28:40,982 --> 00:28:43,652 which is spelled with an E by the way, for those that don't know what that is, 533 00:28:44,072 --> 00:28:47,492 uh, this is like, that, it is like a little air gap and a big air gap, right? 534 00:28:47,762 --> 00:28:51,992 So like a, a true air gap means that it's somewhere else, right? 535 00:28:52,082 --> 00:28:55,982 Um, not just a six inch gap of air sitting in a drawer. 536 00:28:56,252 --> 00:28:58,112 Again, I would have no problem. 537 00:28:58,862 --> 00:29:00,572 Having tapes sitting there in a drawer. 538 00:29:00,602 --> 00:29:03,602 Like if you don't have a big enough tape library and you've got tapes that are, 539 00:29:03,692 --> 00:29:08,282 that's your on-prem copy, but your other copy needs to be in another location. 540 00:29:08,932 --> 00:29:13,492 I'm just wondering though, like industry de, I know this is Curtis's definition of 541 00:29:13,492 --> 00:29:17,602 what an air gap is to solve the problems that existed back in the nineties. 542 00:29:18,592 --> 00:29:18,982 Um. 543 00:29:19,942 --> 00:29:24,622 Industry terms though today, do you think that the industry follows that 544 00:29:24,622 --> 00:29:29,812 same terminology or that same thought when they think about an air gap? 545 00:29:29,812 --> 00:29:34,852 Because I would say that most people, at least like when I heard the term air gap, 546 00:29:34,852 --> 00:29:41,722 right, it was really around that there's no direct access connectivity to the data. 547 00:29:42,172 --> 00:29:46,252 So if you are, so I've seen some vendors who would say, 548 00:29:46,252 --> 00:29:48,712 look, I don't have any like. 549 00:29:50,392 --> 00:29:53,962 One, uh, thing is like a skiff, Right, 550 00:29:54,517 --> 00:29:55,567 Right, right. 551 00:29:55,642 --> 00:29:58,312 infrastructure framework, whatever it is, right? 552 00:29:58,317 --> 00:30:03,082 It's basically a secure environment where there's no connectivity outside, right? 553 00:30:03,082 --> 00:30:03,772 And they call that 554 00:30:03,882 --> 00:30:09,612 you know, in terms of, yeah, in, in terms of, you know, industry 555 00:30:09,697 --> 00:30:13,717 definition, there's basically two groups of people in the industry. 556 00:30:14,047 --> 00:30:17,527 There's vendors and then there's people like me, right? 557 00:30:17,932 --> 00:30:23,542 No one like me would define an air gap the way that you're talking about, right? 558 00:30:23,692 --> 00:30:30,802 I mean, maybe, you know, we, we, we could talk about it. 559 00:30:30,802 --> 00:30:35,602 An air gapped system that is sitting there in the data center that isn't 560 00:30:35,602 --> 00:30:36,802 physically connected to anything. 561 00:30:37,102 --> 00:30:37,927 but that, what's the point of it? 562 00:30:39,017 --> 00:30:42,262 I, I, well, I, I knew an air gap system. 563 00:30:43,192 --> 00:30:45,562 Well, it wasn't actually air gapped, it was just, again, 564 00:30:45,622 --> 00:30:46,942 electronically, air gapped. 565 00:30:47,542 --> 00:30:54,382 Uh, when I did work, uh, for the large internet retail company, uh, 566 00:30:54,382 --> 00:30:58,132 their, their payment processing system was air gapped in a lot of ways. 567 00:30:58,132 --> 00:30:58,432 Right. 568 00:30:58,432 --> 00:31:02,032 But it still, in order to work it, it wasn't actually air 569 00:31:02,032 --> 00:31:03,292 gapped, it was just Right. 570 00:31:04,312 --> 00:31:07,222 But I couldn't talk to it in any, in any other way. 571 00:31:07,567 --> 00:31:11,977 Well, and I think that's important because as our listeners are probably 572 00:31:12,217 --> 00:31:15,667 trying to read vendor brochures and other things and trying to understand 573 00:31:15,667 --> 00:31:17,887 like what is air gap versus what's not. 574 00:31:17,887 --> 00:31:19,867 Because a lot of vendors, like you said, throw out the term, 575 00:31:19,867 --> 00:31:21,877 oh, we're air gaped, right? 576 00:31:21,882 --> 00:31:26,167 So I think it's important to understand why you need air gaping. 577 00:31:26,902 --> 00:31:29,722 And what problems you it is solving for. 578 00:31:29,722 --> 00:31:32,242 So then you can evaluate is it truly an air gap or not? 579 00:31:32,242 --> 00:31:35,182 And I think you gave a good example earlier on in this 580 00:31:35,182 --> 00:31:37,162 episode about, Hey, here's why. 581 00:31:37,672 --> 00:31:39,022 What Air Gap solved for me? 582 00:31:40,057 --> 00:31:48,637 Yeah, so I, I think that a properly designed backup and DR system, one of 583 00:31:48,637 --> 00:31:57,967 the copies needs to be in, um, another physical location, and it needs to 584 00:31:57,967 --> 00:32:05,287 be air gapped and separated from the primary in as many ways as possible. 585 00:32:05,977 --> 00:32:09,307 I'm not asking anybody, and I know some people still make tape copies 586 00:32:09,307 --> 00:32:12,517 and I, I have no problem with that, but I'm not asking large companies 587 00:32:12,517 --> 00:32:15,727 to start going out and buying big tape libraries and, and copying it, 588 00:32:15,757 --> 00:32:20,047 although I'm sure our friends at, at, you know, IBM and Spectra Logic and all 589 00:32:20,047 --> 00:32:23,557 these companies, and Fujifilm would be very, very happy for you to do that. 590 00:32:24,247 --> 00:32:29,677 Um, I'm just saying that we, we take that as a standard, this physically 591 00:32:29,677 --> 00:32:33,667 separate place where I have to go through a different process. 592 00:32:34,402 --> 00:32:39,952 And again, the, the principles to take away from that are that normal 593 00:32:39,957 --> 00:32:42,712 tape rotation was fine, that just 594 00:32:42,967 --> 00:32:44,257 Normal retention, right? 595 00:32:44,812 --> 00:32:45,532 yeah, normal. 596 00:32:45,592 --> 00:32:50,122 Which basically in modern day term would be normal retention backups being 597 00:32:50,122 --> 00:32:54,322 deleted automatically by your backup system after your retention period 598 00:32:54,322 --> 00:32:58,072 expires should just happen where. 599 00:32:58,822 --> 00:33:04,942 The alarms should go off and the protection, uh, goes up is when you 600 00:33:04,942 --> 00:33:11,602 are transferring those backups back or deleting those backups prior to 601 00:33:11,692 --> 00:33:16,852 any other normal, uh, timeframe, and we have to protect against. 602 00:33:17,392 --> 00:33:24,352 That in as many ways as possible and as many ways as, as you can 603 00:33:24,352 --> 00:33:26,182 that we're like what we used to do. 604 00:33:26,422 --> 00:33:26,902 Right. 605 00:33:27,352 --> 00:33:31,732 Um, and again, you look at, so I, I, so I thought it'd be great to 606 00:33:31,732 --> 00:33:38,122 revisit this, this, the, the news here from the, the uk and again, 607 00:33:38,122 --> 00:33:41,032 this is from the national cyber. 608 00:33:41,917 --> 00:33:46,987 Security center, by the way, cyber spelled with an e, ER, but center is with an RE. 609 00:33:47,107 --> 00:33:48,097 I don't know what's that about. 610 00:33:48,097 --> 00:33:54,127 Anyway, so, uh, the, you, do you want to tackle the first principle? 611 00:33:54,547 --> 00:33:59,407 so the first principle is backups should be resilient to destructive actions, which 612 00:33:59,617 --> 00:34:01,597 I think is what you just said, right? 613 00:34:01,627 --> 00:34:01,747 So. 614 00:34:02,767 --> 00:34:08,467 You wanna make sure that anytime you are trying to delete the backup 615 00:34:08,467 --> 00:34:11,467 after it's been created, before the retention policy goes off, right? 616 00:34:11,467 --> 00:34:13,507 You wanna make sure that that's not allowed. 617 00:34:14,017 --> 00:34:17,227 Um, and then the other thing that they also mentioned is offering a 618 00:34:17,227 --> 00:34:23,707 soft delete mechanism where it's sort of, it goes away, the system thinks 619 00:34:23,707 --> 00:34:25,267 it goes away, but it still exists. 620 00:34:25,272 --> 00:34:28,747 And this allows you to recover in case you actually need it. 621 00:34:29,887 --> 00:34:30,457 Um. 622 00:34:31,057 --> 00:34:36,247 And then if you are doing any deletion or alteration request, right, you 623 00:34:36,247 --> 00:34:37,867 delay the implementation of it. 624 00:34:37,867 --> 00:34:43,357 So if someone says, Hey, I want to delete everything older than 30 days, you don't 625 00:34:43,357 --> 00:34:48,762 allow that to happen for say, two weeks, as well as alerting when that happens. 626 00:34:50,852 --> 00:34:56,492 The, the other thing that's part of that is the, the forbidding destructive 627 00:34:56,497 --> 00:34:58,892 requests, right from customer accounts. 628 00:34:59,162 --> 00:35:00,392 What I like here is. 629 00:35:01,142 --> 00:35:01,712 All. 630 00:35:01,772 --> 00:35:03,542 So here's a phrase I'm reading from this. 631 00:35:03,602 --> 00:35:05,792 All exceptional destructive requests. 632 00:35:05,792 --> 00:35:09,002 Again, going back to what I said before, things out of the norm. 633 00:35:09,182 --> 00:35:14,852 All exceptional destructive requests must be authorized out of band using 634 00:35:14,852 --> 00:35:18,962 a pre-agreed upon mechanism between the customer and the backup service. 635 00:35:19,532 --> 00:35:26,042 So it's okay to create a backup system that allows, that allows for this, but. 636 00:35:26,307 --> 00:35:29,637 It needs to not just be somebody pointing and clicking, right 637 00:35:29,637 --> 00:35:34,027 Something, issuing an API call and then the, the data just gets deleted. 638 00:35:34,027 --> 00:35:37,927 It needs to be a conversation between two people that know each other, 639 00:35:38,197 --> 00:35:41,557 and you can, you can put all of the protections, again, just like the 640 00:35:41,562 --> 00:35:43,357 protections that I talked about back then. 641 00:35:44,017 --> 00:35:47,407 You can say, Hey, I have this, I have this security phrase. 642 00:35:47,497 --> 00:35:52,267 I, you know, you can have multiple security phrases, and I need to 643 00:35:52,267 --> 00:35:57,787 give you the name of my dog that's named after a Indian sweet treat. 644 00:35:57,862 --> 00:35:59,452 Or you could say, Curtis is Guapo 645 00:36:00,722 --> 00:36:01,557 curtis is guapo. 646 00:36:01,867 --> 00:36:02,347 Yeah. 647 00:36:02,887 --> 00:36:07,357 Um, I remember, uh, I remember my, uh, when we had, when we had 648 00:36:07,357 --> 00:36:11,527 a a, an arm, a security company for the, for the house here. 649 00:36:11,887 --> 00:36:13,777 I remember that our passcode was lumpia. 650 00:36:14,797 --> 00:36:17,257 Um, that was, that was our security pass phrase. 651 00:36:17,437 --> 00:36:19,087 Like when, if you had a a false alarm. 652 00:36:19,592 --> 00:36:21,122 This was the, everything's fine. 653 00:36:21,122 --> 00:36:22,532 And they're like, what is your passcode? 654 00:36:22,532 --> 00:36:22,862 And you're like, 655 00:36:24,247 --> 00:36:24,327 Hmm. 656 00:36:24,332 --> 00:36:24,752 okay. 657 00:36:25,232 --> 00:36:30,962 Um, and yeah, there, there could also be a distress code, which our, our passcode is. 658 00:36:32,147 --> 00:36:32,507 I don't know. 659 00:36:32,567 --> 00:36:36,167 I don't know some other thing, but yeah, it's out of band. 660 00:36:36,497 --> 00:36:44,597 And again, because of ai, because of the ability to mimic speech and, uh, you need 661 00:36:44,597 --> 00:36:51,227 to have, you know, multiple, you need to basically do things that can't, that 662 00:36:51,227 --> 00:36:54,887 aren't stored digitally anywhere, that can't be stolen and then used against you. 663 00:36:55,337 --> 00:36:57,827 So you need a, you need a passcode, right? 664 00:36:58,247 --> 00:37:00,677 don't leave the passcode in your email box. 665 00:37:01,592 --> 00:37:03,002 Exactly right. 666 00:37:03,032 --> 00:37:05,702 Well, don't ever, don't ever put it, don't ever put it in your email box. 667 00:37:05,702 --> 00:37:06,062 Right. 668 00:37:06,452 --> 00:37:07,172 Um, 669 00:37:07,232 --> 00:37:09,872 just have, you need to have a conversation with a real person. 670 00:37:09,872 --> 00:37:10,232 Yeah. 671 00:37:10,907 --> 00:37:13,847 So I know we've talked about password managers in the past. 672 00:37:14,447 --> 00:37:18,887 Would you put that pass phrase in your password manager? 673 00:37:21,977 --> 00:37:22,097 Hmm. 674 00:37:22,957 --> 00:37:24,782 Um, I might, 675 00:37:25,547 --> 00:37:26,147 I would say no. 676 00:37:26,147 --> 00:37:26,177 I. 677 00:37:27,782 --> 00:37:30,662 Yeah, you, uh, yeah, we could have a separate conversation about 678 00:37:30,662 --> 00:37:33,152 that, but you, you shouldn't. 679 00:37:33,482 --> 00:37:37,142 It's just a question of, it's the whole, like, this is like that episode that 680 00:37:37,142 --> 00:37:40,742 we had of like, how do you do things when you, when you've lost everything. 681 00:37:41,252 --> 00:37:41,672 Right. 682 00:37:41,732 --> 00:37:44,282 Um, you need a, you need a fail safe place. 683 00:37:46,277 --> 00:37:48,947 Um, all right, we, we could talk about that all day. 684 00:37:49,217 --> 00:37:54,107 So the next thing is a backup system shouldn't be configured so that it's 685 00:37:54,107 --> 00:37:57,557 possible to deny all customer access. 686 00:37:58,037 --> 00:38:04,157 Um, and what this, the way I'm interpreting this is making sure 687 00:38:04,157 --> 00:38:08,627 that if active directory in your site goes down, you don't lose, 688 00:38:08,747 --> 00:38:12,497 um, access to your backup system because it's using active directory. 689 00:38:13,892 --> 00:38:14,182 Yeah. 690 00:38:14,642 --> 00:38:20,267 Or if the customer is able to compromise your policies, right? 691 00:38:20,267 --> 00:38:22,692 You wanna make sure it's not all tied to a single account. 692 00:38:24,107 --> 00:38:25,907 Exactly, and we've talked about this quite a bit. 693 00:38:25,907 --> 00:38:31,067 Please don't use active directory, um, you know, as your password 694 00:38:31,127 --> 00:38:36,317 management system for, for critical infrastructure like this, the, um. 695 00:38:36,767 --> 00:38:40,757 We, we had, by the way, you, you may recall when, when we had that, that 696 00:38:40,757 --> 00:38:45,347 person that had a DR scenario, right? 697 00:38:45,347 --> 00:38:49,607 And they were in an island and the, you know, um, remember 698 00:38:49,607 --> 00:38:50,897 we, we didn't say the island. 699 00:38:50,897 --> 00:38:53,807 It was the island in the Caribbean that they went there after hurricane. 700 00:38:53,807 --> 00:38:55,997 And one of the problems they had was that their backup systems 701 00:38:55,997 --> 00:38:57,227 relied on active directory. 702 00:38:57,227 --> 00:38:57,977 That was where? 703 00:38:58,397 --> 00:38:58,607 In the 704 00:38:58,907 --> 00:38:59,267 Yep. 705 00:38:59,327 --> 00:38:59,897 Which they had no 706 00:39:00,077 --> 00:39:00,437 Yeah. 707 00:39:00,467 --> 00:39:01,637 So, yeah. 708 00:39:01,697 --> 00:39:03,077 So don't do that, right? 709 00:39:03,082 --> 00:39:04,067 That's principle two. 710 00:39:04,127 --> 00:39:04,727 You wanna talk about 711 00:39:04,727 --> 00:39:05,057 principle 712 00:39:05,267 --> 00:39:09,437 principle three is making sure that you could restore from a backup version, 713 00:39:09,767 --> 00:39:11,657 even if other versions are corrupted. 714 00:39:12,287 --> 00:39:14,932 And this is like we've talked about, right? 715 00:39:15,072 --> 00:39:18,377 You get hit with ransomware, it's gonna start corrupting data. 716 00:39:19,037 --> 00:39:21,887 And you might not notice it for 20 days. 717 00:39:21,887 --> 00:39:26,507 And so you wanna make sure that you can go back and restore from a version, 718 00:39:27,107 --> 00:39:29,597 even though the newer versions are old. 719 00:39:29,597 --> 00:39:31,997 So making sure that you have a way to. 720 00:39:33,362 --> 00:39:35,012 Keep those backup versions. 721 00:39:35,012 --> 00:39:38,792 I know in a previous episode we talked about replication and why replication 722 00:39:38,797 --> 00:39:41,522 is not great for backups, right? 723 00:39:41,522 --> 00:39:45,542 So making sure that you have that, making sure there's a mechanism to test. 724 00:39:45,542 --> 00:39:48,902 I know that's been one of the things that we always talk about 725 00:39:48,902 --> 00:39:53,522 is verify your backups because a non verified backup is useless 726 00:39:55,427 --> 00:39:59,957 . This is one that to me, as a backup person, I'm saying, well, yeah, 727 00:39:59,957 --> 00:40:04,847 duh, but, but, but not everybody has versions in their backup. 728 00:40:05,357 --> 00:40:07,367 Your backup has to have versions, right. 729 00:40:07,367 --> 00:40:11,027 It, it can't be just a replicated copy of the most recent transactions. 730 00:40:11,357 --> 00:40:13,697 It's got to have the ability to go back in time. 731 00:40:13,757 --> 00:40:17,357 And, and this is more, more true now than ever before. 732 00:40:17,447 --> 00:40:19,997 You've got to be able to go because they could, they could 733 00:40:19,997 --> 00:40:21,137 corrupt both your primary. 734 00:40:21,587 --> 00:40:22,277 And your backup 735 00:40:22,277 --> 00:40:22,667 copy. 736 00:40:23,777 --> 00:40:25,397 And so just make sure you have that. 737 00:40:25,397 --> 00:40:29,687 And then also make sure you have a retention period, right? 738 00:40:29,747 --> 00:40:35,327 Or say that you are gonna store a fixed number of backups based on time, 739 00:40:35,807 --> 00:40:37,727 rather than number of backups, right? 740 00:40:37,757 --> 00:40:37,907 So 741 00:40:38,117 --> 00:40:39,437 Rather than just number of versions. 742 00:40:39,437 --> 00:40:39,707 Yep. 743 00:40:41,117 --> 00:40:44,897 and just be flexible in having different storage policies. 744 00:40:44,897 --> 00:40:47,447 Not everything needs to be kept for the same amount of time. 745 00:40:48,887 --> 00:40:54,077 And just say, okay, I don't need all my copies to be stored for 746 00:40:54,077 --> 00:40:56,507 six years or six months even. 747 00:40:56,837 --> 00:41:00,707 Maybe I only need dailies for a month, and then after that I can do weeklys. 748 00:41:01,007 --> 00:41:05,237 So allow these flexible policies because that'll make it more flexible 749 00:41:05,537 --> 00:41:09,077 and allow you to keep data for longer periods of time as well. 750 00:41:10,532 --> 00:41:11,132 Exactly. 751 00:41:11,852 --> 00:41:15,662 Uh, the next principle is robust key management for data at rest. 752 00:41:15,667 --> 00:41:17,282 Protection is in use. 753 00:41:17,732 --> 00:41:22,622 So yeah, if it's backups, it needs to be encrypted and you need a 754 00:41:22,622 --> 00:41:24,302 robust key management system. 755 00:41:24,692 --> 00:41:24,752 I. 756 00:41:24,752 --> 00:41:28,112 That allows you to do things like rotate keys, delete keys. 757 00:41:28,472 --> 00:41:35,312 Um, also they talk about offering an out ofAnd, uh, key backup option right there. 758 00:41:35,312 --> 00:41:40,082 There are companies that will actually do key escrow for you, and this is again, 759 00:41:40,082 --> 00:41:42,152 that you need a doomsday copy of that. 760 00:41:42,182 --> 00:41:45,692 You need a you, you need the, the way to basically bring 761 00:41:45,692 --> 00:41:47,102 in a key management system. 762 00:41:47,312 --> 00:41:52,672 Again, think about everything going wrong, and again, when your primary 763 00:41:52,702 --> 00:41:57,172 goes down, you don't want your cloud backup system, for example, to rely on 764 00:41:57,172 --> 00:41:58,762 the key management system in your data 765 00:41:58,767 --> 00:41:59,182 center. 766 00:41:59,927 --> 00:42:00,217 that 767 00:42:00,262 --> 00:42:00,742 Right. 768 00:42:01,072 --> 00:42:03,292 Um, yeah, that would be bad. 769 00:42:03,322 --> 00:42:05,062 So that, that's a relatively easy one. 770 00:42:05,062 --> 00:42:05,152 Go 771 00:42:05,407 --> 00:42:09,007 So going back to the previous story you told about that company 772 00:42:09,012 --> 00:42:12,637 you worked for that ended up getting the wrong tote of tapes, 773 00:42:13,522 --> 00:42:13,822 Yeah. 774 00:42:14,767 --> 00:42:17,917 did they ever check the tapes to see if they were The data was encrypted. 775 00:42:18,997 --> 00:42:22,687 I didn't get to, probably not back in that timeframe. 776 00:42:23,197 --> 00:42:23,617 Right. 777 00:42:23,882 --> 00:42:27,247 So yeah, so even if you are using tapes, make sure you encrypt your data. 778 00:42:27,427 --> 00:42:29,917 It shouldn't just be for the cloud copies. 779 00:42:31,777 --> 00:42:35,827 And I will say encryption done properly, um, doesn't slow down 780 00:42:35,827 --> 00:42:41,017 your backups, so, um, so by the way, oh, what I will say this. 781 00:42:42,457 --> 00:42:48,427 Dedupe, then encrypt, don't encrypt, then ddu, because dedupe 782 00:42:48,427 --> 00:42:50,017 works by looking for patterns. 783 00:42:50,017 --> 00:42:51,667 Encryption works by getting rid of them. 784 00:42:51,907 --> 00:42:54,757 So, uh, you gotta do that in the right order. 785 00:42:54,877 --> 00:42:56,107 All right, final principle 786 00:42:56,242 --> 00:42:57,922 Is alerts, right? 787 00:42:58,012 --> 00:43:03,112 This is super important that whenever significant changes are made, that 788 00:43:03,112 --> 00:43:06,412 you have some alerting mechanisms so you understand what's going on. 789 00:43:06,802 --> 00:43:12,682 Significant could be things like someone went and added a new user, or they're 790 00:43:12,687 --> 00:43:14,812 trying to change the retention policy. 791 00:43:15,172 --> 00:43:18,982 You wanna make sure that you can catch these as early as you can 792 00:43:18,982 --> 00:43:22,462 to make sure that there's nothing funky going on in your environment. 793 00:43:22,462 --> 00:43:26,062 the, the key here is, you know, just when something. 794 00:43:26,422 --> 00:43:30,742 Out of band or out, out of the norm is happening, especially 795 00:43:30,742 --> 00:43:35,632 when it's a high risk thing like deleting backups or restores. 796 00:43:36,052 --> 00:43:41,782 I, I don't know how, you know, how you've seen it, but I, nobody restores anything. 797 00:43:42,382 --> 00:43:42,802 Right. 798 00:43:42,802 --> 00:43:45,352 I mean, I mean, it's like we make all these backups and they very, 799 00:43:45,352 --> 00:43:48,567 very rarely restore data and. 800 00:43:49,182 --> 00:43:53,982 So when a restore kicks off, that should be a high risk 801 00:43:53,982 --> 00:43:55,692 alert that is going off saying, 802 00:43:59,981 --> 00:44:02,831 Hey, there is this restore going on. 803 00:44:02,831 --> 00:44:05,201 And you're all like, oh, yeah, yeah, we're doing the restore the thing. 804 00:44:05,201 --> 00:44:06,341 It's, everything's fine. 805 00:44:06,821 --> 00:44:11,021 But if you see this big alert that's going on, there's a big old restore going on. 806 00:44:11,661 --> 00:44:15,051 And no one knows who's kicked off the restore. 807 00:44:15,201 --> 00:44:17,151 You can do something about it at that point. 808 00:44:17,211 --> 00:44:17,571 Right. 809 00:44:18,081 --> 00:44:24,441 Um, there was, um, you know, we had a, a cyber expert on the podcast a couple 810 00:44:24,446 --> 00:44:28,101 months ago and he talked, remember how he said he loves backup systems? 811 00:44:28,656 --> 00:44:32,091 'cause 'cause he loves to use them to, to steal data. 812 00:44:32,391 --> 00:44:33,981 We're like, oh, that's really depressing. 813 00:44:34,417 --> 00:44:38,737 I think, I think another one that they call out that I think doesn't get 814 00:44:38,737 --> 00:44:42,037 enough focus is people stopping backups. 815 00:44:43,402 --> 00:44:44,002 Yes. 816 00:44:44,392 --> 00:44:44,742 Right. 817 00:44:44,962 --> 00:44:45,502 In addition. 818 00:44:45,712 --> 00:44:46,902 Right, because 819 00:44:47,302 --> 00:44:47,602 yeah. 820 00:44:47,602 --> 00:44:48,022 Agreed. 821 00:44:48,027 --> 00:44:48,187 Yeah. 822 00:44:48,352 --> 00:44:51,712 A lot of ransomware actors that'll stop your backups and you may not realize 823 00:44:51,712 --> 00:44:56,602 it for 15 days, and by then you don't have any good backups left because 824 00:44:56,932 --> 00:44:58,792 your old backups have already expired. 825 00:45:00,232 --> 00:45:01,252 Yeah, that's a really good point. 826 00:45:01,252 --> 00:45:02,302 I'm glad you brought that up. 827 00:45:02,362 --> 00:45:06,682 The be because a lot of the reporting that's built in is they 828 00:45:06,682 --> 00:45:08,212 tell you when a backup is done. 829 00:45:08,812 --> 00:45:10,822 They don't tell you when a backup didn't happen. 830 00:45:11,542 --> 00:45:17,512 So yeah, you wanna have, you wanna have, um, uh, reporting kickoff when something 831 00:45:17,512 --> 00:45:19,192 like that happens, stopping your backups. 832 00:45:19,372 --> 00:45:22,102 'cause they could stop your backups for let's say a week if 833 00:45:22,102 --> 00:45:23,542 they, if they're able to do that. 834 00:45:24,367 --> 00:45:28,447 And, uh, and then they can corrupt your data that, you know, and 835 00:45:28,447 --> 00:45:30,817 your oldest copy is a week ago. 836 00:45:30,937 --> 00:45:32,257 You know, you're gonna, you're gonna lose 837 00:45:32,422 --> 00:45:34,222 yeah, you're gonna lose data or you're probably gonna be 838 00:45:34,222 --> 00:45:35,482 more willing to pay the ransom. 839 00:45:36,757 --> 00:45:37,597 right, right. 840 00:45:38,227 --> 00:45:43,117 So again, I, I am not only am I not against cloud copies of the data, I 841 00:45:43,117 --> 00:45:44,947 really like cloud copies of the data. 842 00:45:45,562 --> 00:45:49,642 Um, I, I, I, I want us to be careful with the term air gap. 843 00:45:49,732 --> 00:45:51,862 I wanna make sure, are you doing all of these things? 844 00:45:51,862 --> 00:45:53,842 How are you mimicking the question? 845 00:45:54,022 --> 00:45:57,082 The overarching question is, how am I mimicking? 846 00:45:57,567 --> 00:45:57,687 I. 847 00:45:57,727 --> 00:46:02,737 What Curtis did with a box of tapes in Iron Mountain back 30 years ago, 848 00:46:03,187 --> 00:46:06,937 that is the standard by which your backups should be measured in terms 849 00:46:06,937 --> 00:46:11,407 of protecting them because they were protected without doing it on purpose, 850 00:46:11,497 --> 00:46:16,447 we were, we were protecting it both from natural disasters as well as hacks. 851 00:46:16,447 --> 00:46:19,867 It's just, back then the hacks were very, very uncommon. 852 00:46:20,617 --> 00:46:24,217 Uh, but now the hacks are the primary reason that we're doing restores. 853 00:46:24,817 --> 00:46:28,657 so this might be a controversial question and we don't have to answer it. 854 00:46:30,007 --> 00:46:33,187 Based on everything you've said and what you're looking to solve 855 00:46:33,187 --> 00:46:38,377 with air gaps, would you call cloud data protection vendors? 856 00:46:38,437 --> 00:46:38,977 Air gap. 857 00:46:41,812 --> 00:46:49,492 I think that, again, have they separated their data from your data? 858 00:46:50,902 --> 00:46:53,212 So, I'll, I'll just say this at best. 859 00:46:53,827 --> 00:46:58,657 At best, I'm gonna call all of these guys electronically, air 860 00:46:58,657 --> 00:47:00,697 gapped or virtually air gapped. 861 00:47:01,027 --> 00:47:03,337 None of them are actually air gapped. 862 00:47:03,937 --> 00:47:04,417 Okay. 863 00:47:04,807 --> 00:47:08,737 Um, because they're all running in a computer that's connected to 864 00:47:08,737 --> 00:47:12,757 something that's, that's a, that's, that's the only real air gap. 865 00:47:12,997 --> 00:47:15,502 So at best, I'm gonna call them virtually air GAed. 866 00:47:16,117 --> 00:47:21,667 And so it's, it's a standard by which we measure something. 867 00:47:22,147 --> 00:47:25,297 And so my question is, how close to you are that, do you have 868 00:47:25,297 --> 00:47:28,747 a separate authentication and authorization system, right? 869 00:47:28,957 --> 00:47:32,467 Do you have, do you have the ability to, to delete backups? 870 00:47:32,797 --> 00:47:37,357 Like, like, like does the, does the hacker have the ability to delete backups? 871 00:47:37,627 --> 00:47:39,577 Do you have the, you know, all the, all the principles 872 00:47:39,577 --> 00:47:40,477 that they talked about here? 873 00:47:40,477 --> 00:47:44,557 I think if you're following, if they're following the principles found in here. 874 00:47:45,097 --> 00:47:47,497 I think they could be called virtually air gapped. 875 00:47:48,217 --> 00:47:51,127 The, the, the problem is not all of them 876 00:47:51,127 --> 00:47:51,487 do. 877 00:47:52,537 --> 00:47:53,017 Right. 878 00:47:53,377 --> 00:48:01,657 Um, and the, if you look at the, the question is, can I electronically, you 879 00:48:01,657 --> 00:48:04,987 know, delete a bunch of stuff without, 880 00:48:06,382 --> 00:48:07,552 Any checks in place? 881 00:48:07,582 --> 00:48:07,912 Yeah. 882 00:48:08,057 --> 00:48:08,417 Right. 883 00:48:08,447 --> 00:48:11,237 Um, and, and if that stuff gets deleted. 884 00:48:11,627 --> 00:48:12,707 Is it really deleted? 885 00:48:12,797 --> 00:48:13,997 Uh, can I get it back? 886 00:48:14,567 --> 00:48:17,387 Uh, what kind of multi-factor authentication system 887 00:48:17,387 --> 00:48:18,347 do you have in place? 888 00:48:18,707 --> 00:48:23,237 Do you have things like multi-person authentication for big actions? 889 00:48:23,237 --> 00:48:24,587 Like, I like the multi-person. 890 00:48:24,587 --> 00:48:25,757 Some people call it four eyes. 891 00:48:26,207 --> 00:48:27,467 Uh, I like the multi-person. 892 00:48:27,467 --> 00:48:29,297 The multi-system authentication. 893 00:48:29,927 --> 00:48:33,617 Um, you know, again, speaking of standards, it's like the 894 00:48:33,617 --> 00:48:34,907 missile key thing, right? 895 00:48:34,907 --> 00:48:36,797 It's not possible for one person. 896 00:48:36,972 --> 00:48:38,412 To turn both missile keys. 897 00:48:38,982 --> 00:48:42,552 So you, you, you add in all those things and if you've got all those 898 00:48:42,552 --> 00:48:45,552 protection, I think I'd be fine with calling them virtually air gapped. 899 00:48:46,902 --> 00:48:51,552 Um, but some of them don't have those systems just because their cloud doesn't 900 00:48:51,552 --> 00:48:52,932 mean they're doing all these things. 901 00:48:52,932 --> 00:48:57,162 In fact, there's a reason that the UK government came out with these principles, 902 00:48:57,372 --> 00:48:58,542 and that's because they're not always 903 00:48:58,922 --> 00:48:59,192 Yeah. 904 00:48:59,892 --> 00:49:02,712 so well. 905 00:49:03,792 --> 00:49:06,402 Hopefully that was helpful to some people. 906 00:49:08,387 --> 00:49:09,287 Uh, 907 00:49:09,497 --> 00:49:11,837 links to the article in the show description. 908 00:49:12,047 --> 00:49:12,557 yeah. 909 00:49:12,647 --> 00:49:13,997 Yeah, that's a great article. 910 00:49:14,027 --> 00:49:16,397 Uh, by the way, I think, I think what we should do next is 911 00:49:16,402 --> 00:49:18,677 what, what actually immutable 912 00:49:18,677 --> 00:49:18,917 is. 913 00:49:21,047 --> 00:49:22,997 Um, that's another one that we talk about. 914 00:49:23,837 --> 00:49:24,377 All right. 915 00:49:24,407 --> 00:49:29,417 Well, uh, thanks Prasanna for your, uh, your wisdom as always. 916 00:49:29,482 --> 00:49:31,577 I try Curtis, and thank you for the. 917 00:49:32,702 --> 00:49:35,912 Educational lesson on, uh, 918 00:49:35,972 --> 00:49:41,722 From the, from back in the day and always, thanks to our listeners. 919 00:49:42,052 --> 00:49:42,832 That's a wrap 920 00:49:45,830 --> 00:49:50,510 The Backup Wrap-up is written, recorded and produced by me w Curtis Preston. 921 00:49:51,080 --> 00:49:52,550 If you need backup or Dr. 922 00:49:52,550 --> 00:49:56,180 Consulting content generation or expert witness work, 923 00:49:56,480 --> 00:49:58,430 check out backup central.com. 924 00:49:59,180 --> 00:50:02,330 You can also find links from my O'Reilly Books on the same website. 925 00:50:02,960 --> 00:50:07,070 Remember, this is an independent podcast and any opinions that you 926 00:50:07,070 --> 00:50:08,960 hear are those of the speaker. 927 00:50:09,025 --> 00:50:10,885 And not necessarily an employer. 928 00:50:11,785 --> 00:50:12,505 Thanks for listening.