1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:04,080 Several years ago, a small startup placed all their eggs in the Google 2 00:00:04,080 --> 00:00:08,490 drive basket, and then proceeded to set that basket on fire. 3 00:00:08,970 --> 00:00:12,390 With one fatal click by an admin over a million dollars. 4 00:00:12,390 --> 00:00:13,320 Went up in smoke. 5 00:00:13,740 --> 00:00:18,240 Today we investigate the tragic tale of Musey, a promising young 6 00:00:18,240 --> 00:00:22,650 company building an innovative app who lost everything when their Google 7 00:00:22,650 --> 00:00:24,480 account was wiped out instantly. 8 00:00:25,110 --> 00:00:28,980 This is our second in a series called cloud disasters. 9 00:00:29,310 --> 00:00:32,580 Organizations that thought their data in the cloud was protected. 10 00:00:32,820 --> 00:00:37,379 Only to find out it wasn't, it was too late for them, but not for you. 11 00:00:37,830 --> 00:00:40,800 Hi, I'm w Curtis Preston, AKA Mr. 12 00:00:40,800 --> 00:00:41,370 Backup. 13 00:00:41,669 --> 00:00:44,580 And my goal with this podcast is to make sure that something 14 00:00:44,580 --> 00:00:46,949 like that never happens to you. 15 00:00:47,190 --> 00:00:49,230 This is the backup wrap up. 16 00:01:04,259 --> 00:01:05,399 W. Curtis Preston: Welcome to the show. 17 00:01:06,089 --> 00:01:11,729 I'm your host, w Curtis Preston, and I have with me Persona Ana. 18 00:01:11,849 --> 00:01:13,469 I'm doing well, Curtis. 19 00:01:13,705 --> 00:01:16,195 We're talking about this concept of. 20 00:01:16,195 --> 00:01:19,435 Things that people think don't need to be backed up. 21 00:01:19,435 --> 00:01:21,205 And they definitely need to be backed up. 22 00:01:21,205 --> 00:01:26,275 And we're zooming in and doing a, a deep dive into each of the 23 00:01:26,275 --> 00:01:31,315 stories that we often talk about when we reference this, right? 24 00:01:31,315 --> 00:01:37,105 So these are, uh, typically cloud systems, you know, cloud services that people 25 00:01:37,105 --> 00:01:39,265 thought that were backed up and then. 26 00:01:40,165 --> 00:01:43,585 Uh, when they accidentally screwed something up, they 27 00:01:43,585 --> 00:01:44,275 found out they weren't 28 00:01:44,330 --> 00:01:46,760 Prasanna Malaiyandi: They were relying on it for their business and for their 29 00:01:46,760 --> 00:01:49,340 livelihood and bad things happen. 30 00:01:49,495 --> 00:01:53,245 W. Curtis Preston: And sometimes, many times those things are like attacks. 31 00:01:53,305 --> 00:01:55,525 Uh, you know, you know, things like that. 32 00:01:56,035 --> 00:02:02,125 In this case though, this, uh, one is, you know, it's a reminder that. 33 00:02:03,110 --> 00:02:06,460 We spent a lot of time on the podcast, talking especially lately 34 00:02:06,820 --> 00:02:11,350 about cyber attacks and things like that and ransomware, and 35 00:02:11,350 --> 00:02:16,900 we don't talk that much about equipment failure because typically, uh, you 36 00:02:16,900 --> 00:02:21,370 know, thanks to the advent of raid and erasure coding and things like that. 37 00:02:22,160 --> 00:02:25,070 Generally, that's not the reason people restore data. 38 00:02:25,170 --> 00:02:29,760 The interesting thing about this story, it that I, one interesting thing that 39 00:02:29,760 --> 00:02:36,360 I found out, or that I noticed was that it was only covered by the register. 40 00:02:36,510 --> 00:02:38,640 So, uh, thanks to the folks over there. 41 00:02:38,640 --> 00:02:39,810 I, I don't even know. 42 00:02:40,095 --> 00:02:44,325 How they, uh, you know, found it, somebody sent it to them 43 00:02:44,325 --> 00:02:45,585 and then nobody else covered it. 44 00:02:45,585 --> 00:02:47,835 Which is interesting 'cause I looked around, I couldn't 45 00:02:47,835 --> 00:02:49,065 find any coverage of it. 46 00:02:49,825 --> 00:02:53,995 Prasanna Malaiyandi: So this is about a company called Musi, which also I found 47 00:02:53,995 --> 00:02:57,985 out, goes by the name of Moss, M-O-S-S-S. 48 00:02:58,583 --> 00:02:59,633 They do have a Facebook page. 49 00:03:00,353 --> 00:03:01,043 That you can find. 50 00:03:01,733 --> 00:03:07,433 But They were a company that was building an interior design app that would be 51 00:03:07,433 --> 00:03:12,103 used by influencers, home decorators and other folks to sort of showcase 52 00:03:12,103 --> 00:03:14,563 what you see on the inside of a house. 53 00:03:14,983 --> 00:03:22,093 And, um, basically somehow someone went and deleted their entire G 54 00:03:22,093 --> 00:03:24,733 Suite account for the entire company. 55 00:03:25,483 --> 00:03:27,613 Which contained all of their data. 56 00:03:28,033 --> 00:03:31,063 And from what I could tell, they weren't doing backups. 57 00:03:31,063 --> 00:03:32,803 And that's kind of where things start now. 58 00:03:32,803 --> 00:03:35,443 They try to get the data back, and I think we'll talk about that in a 59 00:03:35,448 --> 00:03:40,003 little bit about what they did to try to get their data back from Google. 60 00:03:40,033 --> 00:03:43,633 But yeah, like Curtis says, it's not a happy ending. 61 00:03:43,717 --> 00:03:44,137 W. Curtis Preston: Yeah. 62 00:03:44,447 --> 00:03:47,007 It appears that it was their admin, right? 63 00:03:47,012 --> 00:03:51,422 The idea that I remember hearing was that they were trying to delete a test account. 64 00:03:51,422 --> 00:03:51,452 I. 65 00:03:52,372 --> 00:03:56,032 But instead of deleting a test account, they deleted the production account. 66 00:03:56,392 --> 00:03:58,282 And we need to be very specific here. 67 00:03:58,282 --> 00:04:01,402 They didn't delete a user, right? 68 00:04:01,432 --> 00:04:04,792 You know, in, in Google Drive or Google Workspace, you could have 69 00:04:04,792 --> 00:04:06,892 users underneath your account. 70 00:04:07,252 --> 00:04:09,712 They deleted The entire account 71 00:04:10,253 --> 00:04:11,438 Prasanna Malaiyandi: The organization's account. 72 00:04:11,462 --> 00:04:11,702 W. Curtis Preston: Yeah. 73 00:04:11,702 --> 00:04:14,162 The, yeah, the, the entire organization, right. 74 00:04:14,532 --> 00:04:16,332 According to their court filing. 75 00:04:16,722 --> 00:04:20,112 They did immediately contact Google and say, Hey, this thing happened. 76 00:04:20,622 --> 00:04:25,842 And I'm gonna say, sadly, the Google, uh, support rep said, 77 00:04:25,962 --> 00:04:27,882 I'll get right on it, rather than 78 00:04:28,160 --> 00:04:29,930 saying, yeah, you're screwed. 79 00:04:30,776 --> 00:04:31,766 Prasanna Malaiyandi: Not my problem. 80 00:04:31,835 --> 00:04:32,885 W. Curtis Preston: yeah, not my problem. 81 00:04:32,885 --> 00:04:33,575 Yeah, you're screwed. 82 00:04:33,575 --> 00:04:34,385 You should have backed that up. 83 00:04:34,565 --> 00:04:35,525 Uh, where's your backups? 84 00:04:35,885 --> 00:04:40,634 Uh, what the, uh, the Google person allegedly said was, we'll get right on it. 85 00:04:40,964 --> 00:04:46,434 Meanwhile, they're out there desperately trying to reach someone at Google for 86 00:04:46,434 --> 00:04:48,684 multiple days, even multiple weeks. 87 00:04:48,924 --> 00:04:52,794 Meanwhile, they're not able to contact, their customers are not able to, you know, 88 00:04:52,794 --> 00:04:55,344 access any of their intellectual property. 89 00:04:55,344 --> 00:04:56,784 So apparently they had built. 90 00:04:57,699 --> 00:05:04,119 This entire app, uh, and everything was stored in G Drive and apparently they 91 00:05:04,119 --> 00:05:08,229 weren't, uh, you know, I'm just saying based on what happened, it does not 92 00:05:08,229 --> 00:05:10,359 appear that they were synchronizing. 93 00:05:10,389 --> 00:05:14,979 'cause you could synchronize, uh, Google Drive down to your, uh, you know, desktop. 94 00:05:16,104 --> 00:05:19,734 And if they had deleted the account up there, the desktop copy 95 00:05:19,734 --> 00:05:22,434 probably would have, uh, remained. 96 00:05:22,944 --> 00:05:27,564 But they didn't do that because once they had deleted the, um, you know, this. 97 00:05:27,879 --> 00:05:31,629 The, the cloud version of it, they had nothing. 98 00:05:31,629 --> 00:05:31,959 Right? 99 00:05:32,109 --> 00:05:35,439 So they had nothing in their, of their intellectual property that they 100 00:05:35,439 --> 00:05:39,789 had built, uh, that they had spent a million and a half dollars on, right? 101 00:05:39,789 --> 00:05:42,669 That, that was in, in the court filings, that they had spent a million and a 102 00:05:42,669 --> 00:05:44,889 half dollars on this company so far. 103 00:05:45,579 --> 00:05:48,969 And they also mentioned that they weren't able to contact their customers, 104 00:05:48,969 --> 00:05:50,649 they weren't able to do business. 105 00:05:51,159 --> 00:05:54,519 And there is, uh, they said a few weeks later. 106 00:05:54,691 --> 00:05:55,501 I feel like saying 107 00:05:55,686 --> 00:05:56,806 a few moments later. 108 00:05:58,898 --> 00:06:00,938 Prasanna Malaiyandi: I now have that in your head, don't I? 109 00:06:01,081 --> 00:06:01,951 W. Curtis Preston: it's your fault. 110 00:06:02,401 --> 00:06:07,891 Um, go Google did get back to them and say, uh, they can't get their data back. 111 00:06:07,921 --> 00:06:12,331 I think the weirdest part of the story that you might want to talk about is this. 112 00:06:12,356 --> 00:06:13,681 They're saying that 113 00:06:13,681 --> 00:06:17,431 someone at Google, and I don't see any evidence of this, but they're 114 00:06:17,431 --> 00:06:21,511 saying, someone at Google said something along the lines of, maybe you 115 00:06:21,511 --> 00:06:23,791 could get the data back with a court 116 00:06:23,796 --> 00:06:24,301 filing. 117 00:06:25,381 --> 00:06:25,891 Did you see 118 00:06:25,891 --> 00:06:26,641 anything about that? 119 00:06:27,128 --> 00:06:30,638 Prasanna Malaiyandi: I didn't see anything in the articles about 120 00:06:30,638 --> 00:06:33,458 that, but that's just weird. 121 00:06:33,808 --> 00:06:37,468 the Only time I could see that happening is potentially if they 122 00:06:37,473 --> 00:06:43,078 had kept some of that data because of legal hold or some legal reason. 123 00:06:43,511 --> 00:06:43,791 W. Curtis Preston: Yeah. 124 00:06:43,843 --> 00:06:47,503 Prasanna Malaiyandi: Or if for some reason they had a copy somewhere else, 125 00:06:47,503 --> 00:06:50,533 like I could imagine in the case of doing like a disaster recovery copy, 126 00:06:50,533 --> 00:06:52,663 maybe they had that copy somewhere else and you can get the data back. 127 00:06:53,473 --> 00:06:53,683 Right. 128 00:06:53,683 --> 00:06:55,003 It's not their obligation. 129 00:06:55,003 --> 00:06:55,993 It's like a best effort. 130 00:06:55,998 --> 00:06:56,023 I. 131 00:06:56,331 --> 00:06:56,931 W. Curtis Preston: Right. 132 00:06:57,091 --> 00:06:58,526 I agree with both scenarios. 133 00:06:58,526 --> 00:06:59,486 I like that first one. 134 00:06:59,486 --> 00:07:04,346 The second one, you know, we talk a lot about how many of these service 135 00:07:04,346 --> 00:07:09,356 providers, they do have a backup, as I met quotes in the air of like the 136 00:07:09,356 --> 00:07:11,816 entire data center that they can use. 137 00:07:12,536 --> 00:07:15,626 To bring the data center back if they screw it up. 138 00:07:15,986 --> 00:07:16,496 Right. 139 00:07:16,796 --> 00:07:20,396 Um, but the, it's not built for you. 140 00:07:20,426 --> 00:07:25,076 I give an example of Microsoft 365 says that they have a delayed copy of 141 00:07:25,076 --> 00:07:29,906 exchange, uh, that can be used if they screw up the entire exchange environment. 142 00:07:29,906 --> 00:07:33,566 But when I asked them directly as a Microsoft 365 customer, 143 00:07:33,836 --> 00:07:37,106 can I use that delayed copy of exchange to restore my environment? 144 00:07:37,111 --> 00:07:37,856 And they just said, no. 145 00:07:38,351 --> 00:07:38,621 Right. 146 00:07:38,621 --> 00:07:43,031 So maybe that's a scenario where somebody might have been alluding to it. 147 00:07:43,211 --> 00:07:47,291 I don't know if that person was, uh, you know, um, 148 00:07:48,278 --> 00:07:48,498 Prasanna Malaiyandi: and, 149 00:07:48,701 --> 00:07:49,751 W. Curtis Preston: talking outta school. 150 00:07:49,781 --> 00:07:50,201 Right. 151 00:07:50,801 --> 00:07:51,341 Um. 152 00:07:52,023 --> 00:07:54,783 Prasanna Malaiyandi: and also just along that, like if they were a billion dollar 153 00:07:54,788 --> 00:07:59,403 company, I'm sure that it would've been a different result or Google may have 154 00:07:59,403 --> 00:08:04,683 been more willing to jump in and help versus a smaller company like this. 155 00:08:05,111 --> 00:08:05,531 W. Curtis Preston: yeah, 156 00:08:05,531 --> 00:08:07,751 I'm not sure if the result would've been different. 157 00:08:07,751 --> 00:08:11,051 I think maybe the activities along the way would've been the same. 158 00:08:11,471 --> 00:08:16,691 Um, but the, the, the re by the way, the, where we get this, uh, this 159 00:08:16,691 --> 00:08:21,341 comment about the subpoena or civil request was that was in their lawsuit. 160 00:08:21,346 --> 00:08:27,141 And, and I have to say, I feel for these guys, uh, of what happened to them. 161 00:08:27,651 --> 00:08:33,321 Because when I look at the filing, like you really have to see it to, like, you 162 00:08:33,321 --> 00:08:36,611 have to literally lay your eyes on and we'll put a link to it in the show notes. 163 00:08:37,271 --> 00:08:43,331 And what you see is a good portion of it is typed up and sort of like normal. 164 00:08:43,571 --> 00:08:47,231 And then there's all these like handwritten notes all over it. 165 00:08:47,231 --> 00:08:50,051 Like at the very beginning there's this like star. 166 00:08:50,831 --> 00:08:53,981 And it says, serving a civil request to have access to our data 167 00:08:54,011 --> 00:08:59,111 restored or provided as outlined a document for serving civil subpoenas 168 00:08:59,111 --> 00:09:01,271 and civil requests given to us. 169 00:09:01,301 --> 00:09:03,161 Emailed it says by Google. 170 00:09:03,761 --> 00:09:08,021 Um, IE Google sent us instructions to get our data back. 171 00:09:08,801 --> 00:09:11,231 Um, you know, and then. 172 00:09:11,696 --> 00:09:17,186 They just sort of lay out this story in this lawsuit, which they say in the 173 00:09:17,186 --> 00:09:20,456 lawsuit, we're not suing to get money. 174 00:09:20,786 --> 00:09:22,496 We're suing to get our data back. 175 00:09:22,496 --> 00:09:29,816 They basically believed that Google had a copy of their data and Google, you know, 176 00:09:29,906 --> 00:09:32,246 clearly did not have a copy of their data. 177 00:09:32,418 --> 00:09:36,408 Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah, and just looking at the filing, I 178 00:09:36,408 --> 00:09:38,508 don't think a lawyer wrote that, 179 00:09:38,846 --> 00:09:39,176 W. Curtis Preston: No. 180 00:09:39,446 --> 00:09:40,106 Oh yeah. 181 00:09:40,106 --> 00:09:41,006 Thanks for bringing that up. 182 00:09:41,006 --> 00:09:43,916 It is actually listed as a per se lawsuit, 183 00:09:44,426 --> 00:09:45,656 which means that they filed 184 00:09:45,661 --> 00:09:46,376 it themselves. 185 00:09:47,013 --> 00:09:47,403 Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah. 186 00:09:47,748 --> 00:09:51,948 And just like, yeah, with the handwriting and everything else, you could tell 187 00:09:51,948 --> 00:09:55,878 that it was an individual who was not an attorney writing and typing. 188 00:09:55,878 --> 00:09:59,238 And I know that would, like you mentioned Curtis, they wanted their data back and 189 00:09:59,243 --> 00:10:03,318 they were mentioning sort of what type of data they had stored in Google Drive. 190 00:10:03,323 --> 00:10:03,618 Right? 191 00:10:03,618 --> 00:10:09,078 It was, uh, their ip, ui, ux, mockups, user research. 192 00:10:09,783 --> 00:10:13,413 And a whole bunch of other things, algorithm decisions, how they built it. 193 00:10:13,713 --> 00:10:16,983 But the other thing is they were like, yeah, in our emails, we also had medical 194 00:10:16,983 --> 00:10:21,633 records about someone's nephew who was going undergoing some treatment 195 00:10:22,113 --> 00:10:24,333 and they needed access to their emails 196 00:10:24,881 --> 00:10:25,211 W. Curtis Preston: Right. 197 00:10:25,271 --> 00:10:29,861 That was the weirdest part, I think was just reading that they had intermixed. 198 00:10:30,791 --> 00:10:31,871 I, you know what? 199 00:10:32,351 --> 00:10:32,586 I don't know. 200 00:10:32,621 --> 00:10:34,931 That just made no, that part made no sense to me. 201 00:10:35,351 --> 00:10:40,121 Like it's not like they stored, it's not like this was the only copy of their. 202 00:10:40,706 --> 00:10:44,786 Their nephew's medical records, like it was their only copy of 203 00:10:44,786 --> 00:10:45,866 the nephew's medical records. 204 00:10:45,866 --> 00:10:48,056 I, I thought that was very odd. 205 00:10:48,386 --> 00:10:52,776 But the thing in the filing is that this was a filing in the federal. 206 00:10:53,361 --> 00:10:57,951 US District Court for the Northern District of California, by the way, this 207 00:10:57,951 --> 00:11:05,211 was in, um, the Bay Area and they, um, and so you have to give reason why the 208 00:11:05,211 --> 00:11:10,371 federal court would be the jurisdiction, and they listed multiple reasons for that. 209 00:11:11,031 --> 00:11:12,351 Um, but. 210 00:11:12,831 --> 00:11:19,296 What we do know from the dockets, I was able to find that the lawsuit 211 00:11:19,301 --> 00:11:23,346 was withdrawn, basically just 212 00:11:23,976 --> 00:11:25,566 under two weeks later, 213 00:11:26,203 --> 00:11:26,383 Prasanna Malaiyandi: yeah. 214 00:11:27,013 --> 00:11:28,303 That's suspicious. 215 00:11:28,303 --> 00:11:28,483 Yeah. 216 00:11:28,483 --> 00:11:31,183 Well, I think one thing we should also mention is this 217 00:11:31,183 --> 00:11:32,653 happened in what year, Curtis? 218 00:11:32,946 --> 00:11:33,831 W. Curtis Preston: uh, 2019. 219 00:11:34,558 --> 00:11:34,948 Prasanna Malaiyandi: Okay. 220 00:11:35,038 --> 00:11:36,718 Yeah, so this was a while ago. 221 00:11:37,108 --> 00:11:41,924 The interesting thing, and this is all just this is all just, 222 00:11:41,948 --> 00:11:44,498 W. Curtis Preston: Yeah, we're hypothesizing, but I did my best to 223 00:11:44,498 --> 00:11:49,388 try to find out, uh, everything I could, but this is our best effort 224 00:11:49,388 --> 00:11:51,008 to, to figure out what happened. 225 00:11:51,374 --> 00:11:51,674 Prasanna Malaiyandi: yeah. 226 00:11:51,674 --> 00:11:55,544 And I think what, like just given the timeframes, and it was two weeks 227 00:11:55,544 --> 00:11:57,824 later after it was filed, either they. 228 00:11:58,919 --> 00:12:02,279 Decided, or they maybe got legal counsel and talked to someone, they 229 00:12:02,279 --> 00:12:03,359 were like, yeah, you're screwed. 230 00:12:03,359 --> 00:12:04,589 Based on Google's response. 231 00:12:04,589 --> 00:12:08,039 Or Google might have come after them and been like, Hey, if you really 232 00:12:08,039 --> 00:12:10,469 wanna go through this, you're going to fail and then you're gonna have to 233 00:12:10,469 --> 00:12:12,719 pay all our court fees, attorney fees, 234 00:12:12,818 --> 00:12:13,168 W. Curtis Preston: Right, 235 00:12:14,099 --> 00:12:17,819 Prasanna Malaiyandi: in which case that would be like, I could, I can't even 236 00:12:17,819 --> 00:12:20,789 imagine a Google attorney and how much that would cost because it would be 237 00:12:20,789 --> 00:12:22,349 external counsel and everything else. 238 00:12:22,889 --> 00:12:25,379 So they probably were like, yeah, it's not worth it. 239 00:12:25,379 --> 00:12:27,839 Or maybe they talked to someone on Google who said, look. 240 00:12:28,394 --> 00:12:32,234 We understand this is tough luck, but this is what it is. 241 00:12:32,234 --> 00:12:37,994 And so maybe they had some sense knocked into them and they were like, yeah, this 242 00:12:37,994 --> 00:12:39,524 doesn't make sense to move forward with. 243 00:12:39,584 --> 00:12:44,384 It sucks, I feel for them, but there isn't much that Google 244 00:12:44,384 --> 00:12:46,424 could really do at that point. 245 00:12:46,928 --> 00:12:47,288 W. Curtis Preston: Yeah. 246 00:12:47,318 --> 00:12:51,758 What was another sort of interesting thing about the story? 247 00:12:51,758 --> 00:12:54,368 I, I just, I'm not sure why the dates don't line up. 248 00:12:55,088 --> 00:12:59,918 In the filing, uh, the, the lawsuit filing, they said that the deletion 249 00:12:59,918 --> 00:13:02,528 happened on June 8th, 2019. 250 00:13:03,608 --> 00:13:08,048 The domain went up for sale on June 6th, 2019. 251 00:13:08,919 --> 00:13:09,139 Prasanna Malaiyandi: Mm. 252 00:13:09,368 --> 00:13:11,918 W. Curtis Preston: The reason why I say that is, uh, the internet 253 00:13:11,923 --> 00:13:16,208 archive found that right, the, the latest update for the website. 254 00:13:16,688 --> 00:13:22,988 Uh, from June from 2019 was that it went, for se it said, domain available 255 00:13:22,988 --> 00:13:28,718 for purchase, uh, June 6th, 2019, which would suggest that the deletion 256 00:13:28,723 --> 00:13:30,758 happened on June 5th or June 6th. 257 00:13:30,763 --> 00:13:32,588 But, um, I, I 258 00:13:32,593 --> 00:13:34,688 thought that was to a little bit strange. 259 00:13:35,864 --> 00:13:39,824 Prasanna Malaiyandi: I don't mean to throw shade at the company, but it could also 260 00:13:39,824 --> 00:13:44,414 be possible that the company just realized it's not feasible, what they're trying 261 00:13:44,414 --> 00:13:47,654 to do in the timeframes they're given and ran outta cash and we're like, yeah. 262 00:13:48,378 --> 00:13:53,118 , the one interesting thing is the fact that they're completely gone from the web. 263 00:13:53,123 --> 00:13:53,358 Right. 264 00:13:53,358 --> 00:13:56,058 There's no trace of 'em on the internet anywhere. 265 00:13:56,628 --> 00:13:56,958 Right. 266 00:13:56,958 --> 00:13:58,338 It's just really weird. 267 00:13:58,343 --> 00:14:02,058 Like you can always find traces of a company that's gone bust somewhere. 268 00:14:03,106 --> 00:14:03,456 W. Curtis Preston: Right. 269 00:14:03,926 --> 00:14:04,216 yeah. 270 00:14:04,248 --> 00:14:05,748 Prasanna Malaiyandi: like you mentioned, the Register is the 271 00:14:05,748 --> 00:14:06,888 only company that held this 272 00:14:06,888 --> 00:14:07,368 article. 273 00:14:08,471 --> 00:14:08,771 W. Curtis Preston: Yeah. 274 00:14:08,776 --> 00:14:11,981 And, and that, that's why what I was using the internet, uh, 275 00:14:11,981 --> 00:14:19,421 archive for and, uh, the mu app.com was the, was the website and it. 276 00:14:19,946 --> 00:14:22,916 Like I said, it, it showed that it went up for purchase and then it 277 00:14:22,916 --> 00:14:29,156 stayed that, that same way, uh, for another, uh, like a year and a half. 278 00:14:29,156 --> 00:14:33,776 And then it got bought by a Japanese anime artist, which is a really weird 279 00:14:33,781 --> 00:14:35,696 domain for a Japanese anime artist. 280 00:14:35,696 --> 00:14:38,156 But, uh, in 2021. 281 00:14:38,576 --> 00:14:41,606 And the, the co-founder that was just, that was mentioned in the 282 00:14:41,606 --> 00:14:47,006 article, uh, left the company a few months later, um, about. 283 00:14:47,531 --> 00:14:53,381 I, I think they might have tried to make a go of it with what was in 284 00:14:53,381 --> 00:14:55,661 their, you know, memory or something. 285 00:14:55,666 --> 00:14:59,021 Tried to bring the, the, you know, again, that's just pure conjecture, 286 00:14:59,021 --> 00:15:04,481 but the, the company ceased to exist, uh, in, essentially in 2020. 287 00:15:05,061 --> 00:15:10,971 It's a sad, sad story from a single mistake of an admin, an entire company 288 00:15:10,971 --> 00:15:16,216 goes bust because they didn't have a backup of their, uh, cloud data. 289 00:15:17,098 --> 00:15:17,398 Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yep. 290 00:15:17,981 --> 00:15:20,711 that's scary, right? 291 00:15:20,771 --> 00:15:21,491 When you think about 292 00:15:21,550 --> 00:15:21,840 W. Curtis Preston: Yeah. 293 00:15:22,976 --> 00:15:24,686 Prasanna Malaiyandi: Because it's not just the company, right? 294 00:15:24,686 --> 00:15:28,526 It's all the time and effort all the employees put in, right? 295 00:15:28,526 --> 00:15:33,176 All the customers who were hoping and buying products based on 296 00:15:33,181 --> 00:15:34,736 what they were promised, right? 297 00:15:34,736 --> 00:15:37,766 All of the things that they wanted, it's all like, poof. 298 00:15:37,766 --> 00:15:38,246 Gone. 299 00:15:38,870 --> 00:15:40,100 W. Curtis Preston: Yeah, yeah. 300 00:15:40,100 --> 00:15:45,140 And all the, all those poor employees that were hoping probably for some, 301 00:15:45,140 --> 00:15:48,890 uh, IPO, you know, payout or some kind of acquisition or whatever. 302 00:15:48,950 --> 00:15:50,390 Obviously all that goes by. 303 00:15:51,110 --> 00:15:55,470 Um, so when we think about this, what kind of 304 00:15:55,475 --> 00:15:56,910 thoughts come to your mind? 305 00:15:58,026 --> 00:16:00,546 Prasanna Malaiyandi: Well, the first, of course, and I know like 306 00:16:00,551 --> 00:16:05,611 we always like to talk about this, is backup, backup, backup, right? 307 00:16:06,186 --> 00:16:12,576 Don't trust that your cloud provider is going to be backing up your data. 308 00:16:13,206 --> 00:16:14,886 Do your backups yourselves. 309 00:16:14,886 --> 00:16:18,366 Keep a copy because that could easily have saved this company. 310 00:16:19,530 --> 00:16:21,600 W. Curtis Preston: Yeah, it would've made it a non-event. 311 00:16:21,680 --> 00:16:24,710 . It'd be a nice story to tell a cocktail parties about the time 312 00:16:24,710 --> 00:16:26,000 we almost lost the company. 313 00:16:26,480 --> 00:16:29,900 But, uh, and, and that admin would still have a job. 314 00:16:29,960 --> 00:16:30,380 Right? 315 00:16:30,860 --> 00:16:33,170 But unfortunately, they weren't backing it up. 316 00:16:33,170 --> 00:16:35,360 And again, this was a SaaS service. 317 00:16:35,360 --> 00:16:35,630 Right? 318 00:16:35,630 --> 00:16:37,310 Let's just make sure we understand this. 319 00:16:37,580 --> 00:16:41,120 This wasn't the same as the first story that we talked about. 320 00:16:41,150 --> 00:16:44,120 That was an IAS service infrastructure as a service. 321 00:16:44,120 --> 00:16:46,100 This was a software as a service. 322 00:16:46,100 --> 00:16:47,450 This was Google Drive. 323 00:16:47,455 --> 00:16:48,050 This was. 324 00:16:48,275 --> 00:16:51,365 Google Workspace, which is now what it, which is what it's now called. 325 00:16:51,815 --> 00:16:58,595 And, um, they had stored their entire world in that and then deleted it. 326 00:16:58,865 --> 00:17:03,095 If this story doesn't prove to you that SaaS services aren't 327 00:17:03,365 --> 00:17:05,795 backing up your data, number one. 328 00:17:06,275 --> 00:17:10,145 Number two, that they have no legal obligation to bring your 329 00:17:10,145 --> 00:17:12,095 data back when you lose it. 330 00:17:12,245 --> 00:17:15,395 Um, I, I don't know what story would, right. 331 00:17:15,656 --> 00:17:15,896 Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah. 332 00:17:16,445 --> 00:17:18,005 W. Curtis Preston: Uh, 'cause they were sued, right? 333 00:17:18,005 --> 00:17:23,165 They did a, I mean, it was a, it was a hastily filed, uh, you know, sort 334 00:17:23,165 --> 00:17:26,195 of poorly written, uh, filing, but it. 335 00:17:27,020 --> 00:17:29,510 It, they withdrew it for a, a couple weeks later. 336 00:17:29,510 --> 00:17:29,870 Right. 337 00:17:29,930 --> 00:17:32,930 Uh, we don't have any details on that, but it, it wasn't good. 338 00:17:33,590 --> 00:17:36,920 Uh, the other thing is, you know, again, I mentioned it already, but 339 00:17:37,610 --> 00:17:41,360 just to remember that, uh, you know, I, I, I often like to throw out 340 00:17:41,365 --> 00:17:43,190 the phrase from Shakespeare, right? 341 00:17:43,190 --> 00:17:45,560 There's, there's more on, there's more in heaven and earth that 342 00:17:45,560 --> 00:17:47,210 is dreamt of in your philosophy. 343 00:17:47,995 --> 00:17:52,010 And I, I think sometimes we focus a little bit too much lately 344 00:17:52,010 --> 00:17:53,570 on cyber attacks and things. 345 00:17:53,575 --> 00:17:56,090 Just realize sometimes people just do dumb stuff. 346 00:17:57,085 --> 00:18:00,050 Fact, um, in fact, there's a couple of the stories that we have coming. 347 00:18:00,290 --> 00:18:01,910 It's just somebody doing something dumb. 348 00:18:01,940 --> 00:18:03,740 Somebody making a, a fat finger. 349 00:18:03,950 --> 00:18:08,420 The title of the headline for this was, you know, admin Fat Fingers. 350 00:18:08,730 --> 00:18:11,880 This company and, and basically deletes this whole company. 351 00:18:12,300 --> 00:18:15,030 So just realize it's, it's human error. 352 00:18:15,840 --> 00:18:18,690 Prior to hackers taking over everything, human error was the 353 00:18:18,695 --> 00:18:20,160 number one reason we did restore. 354 00:18:20,700 --> 00:18:23,760 Right now it's human error and direction. 355 00:18:23,760 --> 00:18:27,660 I don't know how, what category you wanna put that is, it's not always hackers. 356 00:18:28,300 --> 00:18:34,720 Prasanna Malaiyandi: So the next one is really around keeping personal 357 00:18:34,750 --> 00:18:36,430 stuff on your corporate drive. 358 00:18:37,540 --> 00:18:39,490 I know it's hard. 359 00:18:39,550 --> 00:18:42,070 Everyone works remotely, right? 360 00:18:42,070 --> 00:18:43,120 You have a laptop. 361 00:18:43,120 --> 00:18:45,970 It's like, oh, it's too hard for me to go grab a personal device and 362 00:18:45,970 --> 00:18:47,650 start using that for personal stuff. 363 00:18:48,040 --> 00:18:51,940 Like who doesn't log into Gmail from their work computer, honestly, right? 364 00:18:51,970 --> 00:18:52,780 Or from their phone. 365 00:18:52,780 --> 00:18:58,240 And so things do intermix, but the problem is what happens on a corporate drive? 366 00:18:58,660 --> 00:18:59,560 Don't expect it. 367 00:18:59,560 --> 00:19:04,060 If it's your personal stuff that it will be kept forever and that it's safe, right? 368 00:19:04,600 --> 00:19:07,360 Personal stuff you should really take ownership of. 369 00:19:07,878 --> 00:19:10,938 W. Curtis Preston: Not to mention that by putting medical information 370 00:19:10,938 --> 00:19:16,518 on a company drive, you are subjecting that company to HIPAA requirements. 371 00:19:17,088 --> 00:19:21,408 Um, it, it's not something that you should be doing, uh, you know, 372 00:19:21,408 --> 00:19:25,008 on your, you know, on your, uh, on, on corporate systems, right? 373 00:19:25,013 --> 00:19:25,698 Just not. 374 00:19:26,508 --> 00:19:26,778 Yeah. 375 00:19:26,778 --> 00:19:30,008 There, there's no, not to mention, you leave the company, right? 376 00:19:30,008 --> 00:19:31,448 You're laid off, you're fired. 377 00:19:31,508 --> 00:19:34,568 Uh, you know, they, they have no obligation to give you that data back. 378 00:19:34,568 --> 00:19:34,868 Right? 379 00:19:35,588 --> 00:19:39,518 Um, the other thing is, again, that I would just wanna mention that one of the 380 00:19:39,518 --> 00:19:44,318 reasons why people talk about cloud data, not needing a backup as they're like, oh, 381 00:19:44,318 --> 00:19:45,788 well, there's always this recycle bin. 382 00:19:46,508 --> 00:19:49,838 Some deletions aren't covered by the recycle bin. 383 00:19:51,380 --> 00:19:51,940 Prasanna Malaiyandi: Deletion. 384 00:19:52,358 --> 00:19:54,128 W. Curtis Preston: yeah, it sounds like account deletions. 385 00:19:54,458 --> 00:19:56,198 There are things that you can do in Salesforce. 386 00:19:56,198 --> 00:20:01,468 I was looking at a company that is specializing in backing up intra, which 387 00:20:01,468 --> 00:20:04,348 is what Microsoft Azure AD is now called. 388 00:20:05,218 --> 00:20:07,558 They were listing a handful of things that. 389 00:20:08,233 --> 00:20:13,543 When you mess them up in intra, they're not covered by the recycle bin. 390 00:20:13,543 --> 00:20:17,563 And this is another example, is that there are a number of things, again, there 391 00:20:17,563 --> 00:20:22,693 are more things in heaven on earth than you are dreamt of, uh, in Salesforce. 392 00:20:22,698 --> 00:20:26,113 I know for example, when you change a record, not when you delete 393 00:20:26,113 --> 00:20:29,623 a record, but when you change a record, uh, that's not covered by 394 00:20:29,623 --> 00:20:32,383 the recycle bin, they don't put the old version of That record. 395 00:20:32,885 --> 00:20:34,235 Prasanna Malaiyandi: That would be crazy if they did 396 00:20:34,235 --> 00:20:34,595 that 397 00:20:35,495 --> 00:20:36,455 Could you imagine? 398 00:20:38,413 --> 00:20:41,558 I think this just goes to the point that backups are critical. 399 00:20:42,218 --> 00:20:45,788 You can't trust what, that, there aren't going to ever be 400 00:20:45,788 --> 00:20:47,198 these types of events, right? 401 00:20:47,198 --> 00:20:52,268 That just go and don't have a recycle bin or maybe even the product doesn't 402 00:20:52,268 --> 00:20:55,208 even have a recycle bin or your admin disabled the recycle bin. 403 00:20:55,208 --> 00:20:56,378 What are you gonna do at that point? 404 00:20:57,211 --> 00:21:01,021 W. Curtis Preston: Or the a or, or the hacker is able to clear out the 405 00:21:01,021 --> 00:21:05,011 recycle bin because recycle bins can be cleared out, uh, manually. 406 00:21:05,611 --> 00:21:08,281 Or what they can do is they can set the versions to one, you know, all 407 00:21:08,281 --> 00:21:10,861 these, you know, they're, they're just, it's just a whole bunch of things. 408 00:21:10,861 --> 00:21:11,911 This is why we back up. 409 00:21:12,451 --> 00:21:12,841 Right. 410 00:21:12,901 --> 00:21:17,791 This is, this is why it's just so frustrating to me that 411 00:21:17,821 --> 00:21:19,621 there are groups of people. 412 00:21:20,311 --> 00:21:24,181 Um, some of them who specialize in the platforms that we're talking 413 00:21:24,181 --> 00:21:28,141 about who say, oh, well you don't really have to bag it up, um, despite. 414 00:21:29,281 --> 00:21:34,321 There's a story, at least one story for every major platform we talk 415 00:21:34,321 --> 00:21:37,766 about, and we're gonna cover those stories in subsequent episodes. 416 00:21:38,936 --> 00:21:42,326 So yeah, so back up, back up, back up. 417 00:21:42,776 --> 00:21:46,976 Um, and, and make sure that that backup is stored somewhere other than 418 00:21:47,246 --> 00:21:48,626 the thing we're talking about, right? 419 00:21:48,626 --> 00:21:50,576 Because that's the other problem with the recycle bin, 420 00:21:50,906 --> 00:21:53,186 is that it's stored inside the thing, right? 421 00:21:53,666 --> 00:21:54,116 Um, 422 00:21:54,121 --> 00:21:54,326 or 423 00:21:54,326 --> 00:21:55,646 versioning is stored inside the 424 00:21:55,646 --> 00:21:55,796 thing. 425 00:21:56,628 --> 00:21:58,878 Prasanna Malaiyandi: Or in this case, if they had backed it up to 426 00:21:58,878 --> 00:22:03,738 say a Google Drive under the same account, that wouldn't have saved them 427 00:22:03,911 --> 00:22:04,901 W. Curtis Preston: That wouldn't have saved them. 428 00:22:04,901 --> 00:22:05,231 Yeah. 429 00:22:05,261 --> 00:22:05,531 Yeah. 430 00:22:05,531 --> 00:22:10,331 You need to back it up to another account, um, uh, you know, to another account. 431 00:22:10,481 --> 00:22:12,791 You know, if we're talking about cloud to cloud backups, just make sure it's 432 00:22:12,796 --> 00:22:16,181 backed up to another account that has different, you know, authentication 433 00:22:16,181 --> 00:22:20,231 authorization and has really, really tight lease privilege turned on. 434 00:22:20,381 --> 00:22:21,071 Uh. 435 00:22:21,296 --> 00:22:22,976 And a different region perhaps. 436 00:22:22,976 --> 00:22:23,366 Right? 437 00:22:23,726 --> 00:22:27,446 Um, you know, there are other services to pull it outta the cloud if that's what 438 00:22:27,446 --> 00:22:30,416 you wanna do, but just make sure you're not leaving it all on the same place. 439 00:22:31,346 --> 00:22:33,866 Um, there are services to back up Google Drive. 440 00:22:34,106 --> 00:22:37,106 There are services to back up all of the things that we're talking about. 441 00:22:37,466 --> 00:22:40,406 And, uh, that would be my favorite way. 442 00:22:40,406 --> 00:22:44,666 If we're talking about how to back up the cloud, my favorite way to back up the 443 00:22:44,666 --> 00:22:48,296 cloud would be to back it up to the cloud, do cloud to cloud backups, but back it 444 00:22:48,296 --> 00:22:51,536 up to another service that you're paying 445 00:22:51,536 --> 00:22:52,496 to do this. 446 00:22:52,556 --> 00:22:54,026 Right, right. 447 00:22:54,146 --> 00:22:54,596 Um, 448 00:22:54,813 --> 00:22:56,643 Prasanna Malaiyandi: I'm laugh you, you know why I'm laughing 449 00:22:57,221 --> 00:22:57,441 W. Curtis Preston: Why? 450 00:22:57,513 --> 00:23:01,593 Prasanna Malaiyandi: Because you bought into the cloud service because you didn't 451 00:23:01,593 --> 00:23:05,223 wanna manage equipment, infrastructure, patching, all of that stuff. 452 00:23:05,613 --> 00:23:08,913 And if you went and you're like, Hey, I'm gonna go deploy an on-premises 453 00:23:08,918 --> 00:23:12,693 backup solution so I can pull my data down from the cloud because I wanna 454 00:23:12,693 --> 00:23:17,133 manage it and I want to do all the other stuff, that just seems kind of backwards. 455 00:23:17,816 --> 00:23:20,426 W. Curtis Preston: Yeah, I know, I know there's at least one major 456 00:23:20,426 --> 00:23:22,016 company that does it this way. 457 00:23:22,076 --> 00:23:24,746 Uh, and I'm not saying it's necessarily wrong. 458 00:23:24,746 --> 00:23:25,376 It just doesn't, 459 00:23:26,006 --> 00:23:27,056 it doesn't seem right. 460 00:23:28,251 --> 00:23:28,601 Right. 461 00:23:29,078 --> 00:23:31,203 Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah, unless you have a very specific use case for 462 00:23:31,203 --> 00:23:35,733 needing that particular solution, I could imagine there are cases 463 00:23:36,461 --> 00:23:38,831 W. Curtis Preston: I will, I will say that there are those who 464 00:23:38,831 --> 00:23:41,771 disagree with me and feel that. 465 00:23:42,911 --> 00:23:47,231 We wanna get it out of the cloud for backup reasons, right? 466 00:23:47,231 --> 00:23:53,711 That, that, that the cloud is somehow inherently untrustable, for example. 467 00:23:53,711 --> 00:23:56,201 And so we're gonna pull it out of the cloud and, and store 468 00:23:56,201 --> 00:23:57,821 it in the, in a data center. 469 00:23:57,821 --> 00:24:00,011 And I, I just disagree with those people. 470 00:24:00,191 --> 00:24:01,421 Um, you know, 471 00:24:01,721 --> 00:24:04,331 we, we can, we could agree to disagree on that one, 472 00:24:05,253 --> 00:24:05,543 Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah. 473 00:24:05,548 --> 00:24:05,958 Well, I'll give you 474 00:24:05,958 --> 00:24:08,238 a perfect example is data sovereignty 475 00:24:08,868 --> 00:24:11,478 requirements might dictate that you pull it out 476 00:24:11,808 --> 00:24:12,798 and hold it locally. 477 00:24:13,361 --> 00:24:16,991 W. Curtis Preston: Yeah, it might be, that might be, it might be a, a valid example 478 00:24:17,051 --> 00:24:19,511 or a reason why you might want to do that. 479 00:24:20,951 --> 00:24:25,331 So, well, uh, our second sad story from the 480 00:24:25,381 --> 00:24:25,951 series, 481 00:24:25,951 --> 00:24:26,171 so 482 00:24:26,316 --> 00:24:26,676 thanks. 483 00:24:26,736 --> 00:24:28,806 Thanks for helping me tell the story persona. 484 00:24:29,758 --> 00:24:32,488 Prasanna Malaiyandi: I am so depressed, Curtis, but hopefully it's 485 00:24:32,488 --> 00:24:33,543 a learning lesson for other folks. 486 00:24:34,071 --> 00:24:34,911 W. Curtis Preston: Yeah. 487 00:24:35,101 --> 00:24:38,816 We don't want anyone experiencing schaudenfreude, right? 488 00:24:38,846 --> 00:24:41,546 Uh, we don't want them taking joy in these misfortunes. 489 00:24:41,546 --> 00:24:45,416 We want them learning, uh, from these misfortunes. 490 00:24:45,476 --> 00:24:46,676 We can definitely do that. 491 00:24:47,446 --> 00:24:49,096 And with that I want to thank our listeners. 492 00:24:49,096 --> 00:24:51,766 Be sure to subscribe so that you don't miss an episode. 493 00:24:52,006 --> 00:24:53,446 That is a wrap.