Hi, and welcome to Backup Central's restored all podcast
W. Curtis Preston:I'm your host w Curtis Preston, aka mr.
W. Curtis Preston:Backup, and have with me my confusing mechanical situation, analyst,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Uh, Curtis.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yes.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:We've had quite a few conversations the last few days
Prasanna Malaiyandi:or week I should say.
W. Curtis Preston:We,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:you should give an update for our
Prasanna Malaiyandi:listeners on your current saga.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You're like, it might be too.
W. Curtis Preston:For anybody that cares.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:So I have a Prius with just shy of 200,000 miles and it started showing
W. Curtis Preston:signs of maybe a head gasket, right?
W. Curtis Preston:But it's, But, but in a Prius, when the, the signs are really
W. Curtis Preston:minor, it's not, or at least in the beginning, the signs are really minor.
W. Curtis Preston:It throws an occasional, um, uh, misfire.
W. Curtis Preston:Right?
W. Curtis Preston:And so we, you know, we work on different things, different possib.
W. Curtis Preston:And, and, and I decided that I didn't wanna spend the money on a 200,000
W. Curtis Preston:mile car to do the head gasket.
W. Curtis Preston:And so I decided to try what was considered to be the best of the sealing
W. Curtis Preston:stuff, which happens to be steel seal.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and everything worked out, but, well, it appeared that everything worked.
W. Curtis Preston:But now, after that, my cooling system, Is malfunctioning and it's
W. Curtis Preston:specifically malfunctioning saying that my water pump isn't working and I'm
W. Curtis Preston:getting an actual code that essentially says either the control module or
W. Curtis Preston:the wiring to the water pump or the water pump itself is not working.
W. Curtis Preston:And, uh, some of you that are anti seal stuff or like, Oh, a seal messed up the
W. Curtis Preston:thing, and I don't, I don't know that.
W. Curtis Preston:But anyway, it's just, that's, that's where I'm at.
W. Curtis Preston:So the car is fine if it's idling, it runs.
W. Curtis Preston:Not throwing the error, but the, But the water pump is saying
W. Curtis Preston:it's not running properly, right?
W. Curtis Preston:I, I think it's, I think it's running somewhat.
W. Curtis Preston:Otherwise the car would overheat sooner, but, um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:and just looking at the code, uh, doing some research,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:it looks like if it's not running at like 900 rpm, then it throws that code
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:at least at 900 rpm.
W. Curtis Preston:the easy this is, this is another one when
W. Curtis Preston:you're a do it yourself mechanic, like I could take it to my guy.
W. Curtis Preston:I could take it to my guy, and $500 later we maybe know what's wrong,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yep.
W. Curtis Preston:So for $200 I can replace my water pump.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So what are you gonna do, Curtis?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Did you already order water pump?
W. Curtis Preston:I ordered the water pump.
W. Curtis Preston:It'll be here
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, and it's actually the original, it's a, it's
W. Curtis Preston:the, you know, it's the AON water pump.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:It's the same exact line.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:P T one?
W. Curtis Preston:What is that?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Is that the model number?
W. Curtis Preston:Oh no, it's, you know, it's, it is, it is the same
W. Curtis Preston:company that makes the Prius, um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah, for Toyota.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It just doesn't have the Toyota stamp on it.
W. Curtis Preston:Well, it actually has the Toyota stamp on it, believe it or not.
W. Curtis Preston:It has the Toyota stamp on it, but they grind it off when they sell it on Amazon.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Wow.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:That is interesting cuz I've heard like when you buy like OE
Prasanna Malaiyandi:parts for other companies, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You just are missing the stamp.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Like if you buy headlights for your BMW or whatever and you buy like the Bosh
Prasanna Malaiyandi:ones, which are the OE ones, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You just are missing the uh, BMW badge.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Or stamp on the part.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:But it's interesting that they've actually built the part and then
Prasanna Malaiyandi:they spend the labor and the time
Prasanna Malaiyandi:to.
W. Curtis Preston:I think what it is is they have one line, The
W. Curtis Preston:line makes the, the Toyota stamped parts and it's actually die stamped.
W. Curtis Preston:Is what?
W. Curtis Preston:Is what it is.
W. Curtis Preston:And so then, then, and then somebody
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Could you imagine being that person being
Prasanna Malaiyandi:like, What a waste of a job?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I just sit there.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:And it's very clearly manually done.
W. Curtis Preston:It's very
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:you know, there's a guy with a grinder
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Well, someone's employed at least, so.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, I, that's what it is.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm all about giving people jobs.
W. Curtis Preston:So
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So hopefully next podcast we will have an update.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:yeah, I decided, by the way, I decided
W. Curtis Preston:to give my mechanic some money.
W. Curtis Preston:I sent him some money for some verbal advice he'd given me, and I was like,
W. Curtis Preston:Dude, thanks for, thanks for helping.
W. Curtis Preston:He's been my mechanic for a long time and, and then lately I've
W. Curtis Preston:been doing my own stuff, you know?
W. Curtis Preston:Anyway.
W. Curtis Preston:My constant, my constant companion through it all has been my Prasanna Malaiyandi.
W. Curtis Preston:So let's, uh, uh, I'll throw out our disclaimer.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, neither Prasanna and I or our mechanics or, uh, know what we're doing.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, we also, are doing this independently.
W. Curtis Preston:He works for Zoom.
W. Curtis Preston:I work for Druva.
W. Curtis Preston:This is not a podcast of either company and the opinions that you hear are ours.
W. Curtis Preston:And, uh, be sure to rate us.
W. Curtis Preston:Go to your favorite, uh, podcatcher and scroll down to
W. Curtis Preston:where they have the rating part.
W. Curtis Preston:Click a.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and, uh, you know, and give us, give us five stars, uh, unless you
W. Curtis Preston:don't like us, in which case there's really no need to read In which case
W. Curtis Preston:I wanna know why are you listening?
W. Curtis Preston:Do you just, I wonder, I wonder if there's people who just listen to like
W. Curtis Preston:the first five minutes, just wanna see
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:Of us, of us rambling,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:and
W. Curtis Preston:and then they're like, Okay, he's gonna talk about backups.
W. Curtis Preston:Now I'm outta here.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, wonder if we have this odd, That would be a
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I wonder if you can find that stat though,
W. Curtis Preston:Lord.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, I, yeah, I don't think my, I don't think my host gives that, that
W. Curtis Preston:stat, but it would be really funny if there's a group of people that
W. Curtis Preston:listen for five minutes and they go, Okay, he's talking about tech now.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm outta here.
W. Curtis Preston:I just wanna know what's going on with Prius or is flooring or, Uh,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:like.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:I think we've been doing this long enough.
W. Curtis Preston:Did we record when I was doing solar, I was trying to do my own solar.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yep.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:We did record cuz I do remember, I think Yep.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Talking about that.
W. Curtis Preston:yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Good terms.
W. Curtis Preston:Anyway, uh, I
Prasanna Malaiyandi:speaking of rating this, speaking of rating, if
Prasanna Malaiyandi:we get to 25 ratings, then Curtis will for Christmas, grow a Santa beard.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So he's already started, which is awesome, but for Christmas,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:he will grow the Santa beard.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So please go on.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I think it's the Apple Podcast, right site.
W. Curtis Preston:This is specifically Apple Podcast.
W. Curtis Preston:We're trying to get to, uh, the number of ratings
Prasanna Malaiyandi:yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Trying to get to 25 because I really want to see Curtis with the Santa beard.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So please, please, please go give us a, like, give us a rating.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Leave a comment, and let's try to hit the 25 number.
W. Curtis Preston:On there, there's a comment on there about me doing the
W. Curtis Preston:Santa thing, that would be pretty funny.
W. Curtis Preston:like, I'm leaving this comment just so Curtis will do a Santa beard.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, All right, well there you go.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, and you know, if you wanna join the party, if you want to come and
W. Curtis Preston:talk to us about our topics, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Backup, security, uh, privacy, what else should we talk about?
W. Curtis Preston:Don't we talk about, Oh, you know, just, well, whatever.
W. Curtis Preston:All of those things,
W. Curtis Preston:So if you wanna join the podcast, if you wanna join the conversation,
W. Curtis Preston:reach out to me, uh, at WC Preston on Twitter, or w Curtis Preston at gmail.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, so I thought that, This week we would talk about a trend that's been happening.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm seeing it in a, in a couple of different places, and it's this idea
W. Curtis Preston:that, So, so, we'll, we'll back up.
W. Curtis Preston:There was a trend that cyber attacks were becoming more common, Right?
W. Curtis Preston:Especially ransomware attacks.
W. Curtis Preston:And then another trend was everybody said, Well, we better get cyber insurance.
W. Curtis Preston:We didn't have cyber insurance, but we didn't, you know, it's sort of
W. Curtis Preston:like, I don't have flood insurance cuz I live on top of a hill and,
W. Curtis Preston:you know, that sort of stuff, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Um, even then I, I, I've been watching the news lately and I'm like, I don't
W. Curtis Preston:know, you know, maybe I should get it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Well, it's like the Spectra Logic, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Tony Mendoza, right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:When we had a bond talking about when they got hit with ransomware, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:He's like, Yeah, just a month before the board had bought and
Prasanna Malaiyandi:gone and got cyber insurance.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right?
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, that was, that was really good.
W. Curtis Preston:So it's one of those things where it's like, it's really helpful to
W. Curtis Preston:have somebody in your corner, even if they're not gonna like, pay you a
W. Curtis Preston:million dollars because you got hit.
W. Curtis Preston:You know, it's really helpful to have somebody in your corner, so it's certainly
W. Curtis Preston:something to think about if you're not, if you don't currently have cyber insurance.
W. Curtis Preston:I think it's a solid idea.
W. Curtis Preston:What I think was starting to happen, or the insurance companies
W. Curtis Preston:felt was starting to happen was that they felt that there were.
W. Curtis Preston:, um, certain types of attacks that they couldn't ensure against, or certain types
W. Curtis Preston:of payments they couldn't ensure against.
W. Curtis Preston:So one of the things I think we saw a little while ago was cyber
W. Curtis Preston:companies saying, Listen, we're not gonna pay the ransom, right?
W. Curtis Preston:We're, you know, or, or it's a severely limited amount that
W. Curtis Preston:they're gonna pay the ransom.
W. Curtis Preston:So, We'll help cover damages or whatever, but we're not gonna pay the ransom.
W. Curtis Preston:What I'm seeing now and um, there's two articles that we
W. Curtis Preston:can talk about the, Go ahead.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Was it that they're not gonna pay the ransom?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Or was there also concerns around paying the damages or the lawsuits or
Prasanna Malaiyandi:anything like, Because I think in case of when you get hit with ransomware,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:like there's sort of three buckets I look at in terms of cost, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:One is, Paying the ransom.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Uh, the second is getting your infrastructure back up and
Prasanna Malaiyandi:running, whatever that is.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And then third is paying for any damages that happened because you got hit.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Like this might
Prasanna Malaiyandi:be having to deal Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Loss of business or dealing with lawsuits, Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Or other things like that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So do you know where cyber insurance, when you talk about the cost, were those
Prasanna Malaiyandi:like, that they're reducing?
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, I don't, I don't know.
W. Curtis Preston:And that wasn't the one, that wasn't the thing I wanted to talk about this
W. Curtis Preston:week, but, so I didn't research it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Okay.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:No, no,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:that's okay.
W. Curtis Preston:but, but I, I am aware that that insurance
W. Curtis Preston:companies had been pulling back on.
W. Curtis Preston:Coverage of ransomware.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, that, that, that, that they're not doing the same thing
W. Curtis Preston:that they were doing before.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, you know, and again, it's not across the board, it's not every company,
W. Curtis Preston:but, um, that's what we're seeing.
W. Curtis Preston:And there's two other, um, restrictions that I thought we'd cover.
W. Curtis Preston:And the first, and it was an article that came out, um, just in the last
W. Curtis Preston:week, and that was that, um, Lloyds of London is instructing its insurer
W. Curtis Preston:groups, uh, globally to exclude the quote is catastrophic state
W. Curtis Preston:backed hacks from standalone cyber insurance policy starting next year.
W. Curtis Preston:So
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:Which is a lot to unpack.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:First is this article was dated August 24th because I'm not sure
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:when this, uh, episode will air.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:Um, it's interesting.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:The two things that stood out to me was catastrophic,
W. Curtis Preston:Mm-hmm.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And the definition of what catastrophic is.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I always worry when people use that word, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:In terms of what it covers.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And then the second one, and maybe we could discuss this,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:is also nation state, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Because there are lots.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah, because there are lots of hacking groups that are hard to tell.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Are they sort of state backed or are they independent or what that relationship is.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So maybe we could talk about those two.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:And you know, we've talked about, obviously we've covered like ransomware
W. Curtis Preston:attacks and, and that there's groups like the CONTI ransomware group
W. Curtis Preston:that are huge and there's a lot of feeling that they are state backed.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, that they're, they're certainly state inc encouraged, um, the.
W. Curtis Preston:I, I think, you know, this is one of those, like, you know, I am not a lawyer
W. Curtis Preston:and I'm not even attempting to be a lawyer and I haven't actually seen the contract,
W. Curtis Preston:but I think what they're trying to protect against is like what happened with the
W. Curtis Preston:Solar Winds attack, but the solar winds attack, which, um, I believe we, I believe
W. Curtis Preston:that we believe that it was a state backed attack that, um, The reason, the
W. Curtis Preston:thing with state back to tax, you know, or state, State backed attacks, that's
Prasanna Malaiyandi:That's a mouth full
W. Curtis Preston:T.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Or nation state attack is that they have essentially an unlimited budget
W. Curtis Preston:and so they can do things that perhaps a smaller, smaller hacking group might
W. Curtis Preston:not have or might not be able to do.
W. Curtis Preston:And.
W. Curtis Preston:I think the Solar Winds attack is an example of that because it required
W. Curtis Preston:many, many months of, of, you
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Careful planning Yep.
W. Curtis Preston:and the.
W. Curtis Preston:The result, and this is where I'm getting to the result was catastrophic.
W. Curtis Preston:It took out, you know, it hacked many, many, many companies and I think the
W. Curtis Preston:worry is that there could be worse, even more catastrophic attacks that
W. Curtis Preston:make the Solarwinds attack look small.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:but instead of calling out nation states
Prasanna Malaiyandi:and cat catastrophic, it almost seems better to think about it
Prasanna Malaiyandi:in terms of like the impact.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Uh, another example could be like the CAA hack, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:That affected MSPs, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Like how do they quantify that SolarWinds totally makes sense, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Or someone going against like a Microsoft or the Okta hack that happened, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Because there are so many people who use Okta, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's a little fuzzy
Prasanna Malaiyandi:right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:In terms of,
W. Curtis Preston:I,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah, I know we're interpreting.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, we are interpreting someone else's words.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, I happen to be looking at a Wall Street Journal article.
W. Curtis Preston:We're interpreting someone else's words.
W. Curtis Preston:We haven't seen the contract.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, the, uh, actually, um, let me click on this.
W. Curtis Preston:I haven't seen this before, so I actually have a bulletin.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, so this is, I actually have the bulletin from Lloyd's and
W. Curtis Preston:I'm looking at it right now.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So while you're pulling that up, one of the things,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So I'm reading a register article from the 24th of August, and one of
Prasanna Malaiyandi:the things is that the policies must set out a robust basis on which to
Prasanna Malaiyandi:attribute state sponsored attacks.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And the register article, they actually say that attribution is absolutely hard.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Because like we've talked about, saying that a particular group
Prasanna Malaiyandi:is responsible for an attack or a nation state with a hundred percent
Prasanna Malaiyandi:confidence is really, really difficult.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Or the fact that like these ransomware groups right they're as a service now.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So what does it mean if say there's a nation state sponsoring a ransomware
Prasanna Malaiyandi:group that's offering it as a service and some other smaller groups starts
Prasanna Malaiyandi:using that exact same package?
W. Curtis Preston:So I'm reading the actual memo here.
W. Curtis Preston:Okay, so at a minimum, the state backed cyber attack exclusion must exclude
W. Curtis Preston:losses arising from a war, whether declared or not, where the policy does
W. Curtis Preston:not have a separate war exclusion, exclude losses arising from state
W. Curtis Preston:backed cyber attacks that significantly impair the ability of a state to
W. Curtis Preston:function or that significantly impair the security capabilities of a state.
W. Curtis Preston:So it's a, it's an attack on, on the state.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Gotcha.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So not necess.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So going back to our examples, Kaseya and Solar Winds.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:See, but that's where it gets a little fuzzy still, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Because.
W. Curtis Preston:they're say, they're saying if the United States can't
W. Curtis Preston:function, if you're part of, if you're part of a hack that took out the us.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:To what extent though, Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Could you claim that like an attack on I know.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I know.
W. Curtis Preston:Set out a robust basis by which the parties agree on
W. Curtis Preston:how any state by cyber attack will be attributed to one or more states.
W. Curtis Preston:Ensure all key terms are clearly defined
W. Curtis Preston:Okay?
W. Curtis Preston:So they're not saying what you gotta put in there.
W. Curtis Preston:They're just saying, Dude, you gotta, you gotta exclude the state backed stuff.
W. Curtis Preston:You have to be very clear as to how we're gonna attribute state backed stuff.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yep.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Which I think is gonna be a court challenge for sure.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I could just imagine, cuz this goes into effect in 2023, I believe, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:End of March, 2023.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So I'm.
W. Curtis Preston:saying a phased, A phased attach, but Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Okay.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So I'm guessing that there will probably be lots of court
Prasanna Malaiyandi:challenges in terms of this, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So we shall see how Lloyd's handle, I understand what
Prasanna Malaiyandi:they're trying to do, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Because some of these, like you said, are very costly, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's outside the scope.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's just like today, most insurance policies don't cover an act of war, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And so
W. Curtis Preston:yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I can see why they're doing this.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, I think what they're saying is this is an act of war.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, you know, declared or not, and that we don't, we're not gonna cover it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Speaking of declared and not declared war, do you wanna talk
Prasanna Malaiyandi:about the show that you've been watching?
W. Curtis Preston:yeah, I'll talk about this show.
W. Curtis Preston:So there's a show on Peacock, I think it's, it was a UK show that was popular
W. Curtis Preston:in the UK and now they brought it to the US and it's called The Undeclared War.
W. Curtis Preston:And it's, I, I thought it was a pretty good show.
W. Curtis Preston:The, there was nothing that really made me, you know, it's, it's a
W. Curtis Preston:show about cyber and, and, and other state backed attacks specifically
W. Curtis Preston:on Russia or by Russia on the uk.
W. Curtis Preston:And they, um, they, they got, I mean, there's, there's some tech stuff where
W. Curtis Preston:I was like, I'm not sure if that's, if that does what you're saying it does.
W. Curtis Preston:And, um, One thing I'm always interested is when you, when you see, it's, when
W. Curtis Preston:they're looking at the code, like, I don't know, is their ability to look
W. Curtis Preston:at the code, if there's code that has been compiled, is it possible
W. Curtis Preston:to disassemble that and look at it?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:It is.
W. Curtis Preston:Okay.
W. Curtis Preston:All
Prasanna Malaiyandi:well it, But it wouldn't end up being code, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You would ba
W. Curtis Preston:It would,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:like you might end, Yeah, it'd be assembly.
W. Curtis Preston:Okay.
W. Curtis Preston:So that, that part again, that, that was where I, I wasn't sure that that
W. Curtis Preston:was possible what they were doing.
W. Curtis Preston:But then again, I think what I was looking at was Python , so maybe it
W. Curtis Preston:wasn't compiled code cuz it was actually a reference to Python in the, the thing and.
W. Curtis Preston:But then they also had her, Sorry, I'm focusing on the techy things that
W. Curtis Preston:maybe they got wrong, but, but overall, the, the overall concepts that they
W. Curtis Preston:got right where basically it was a, and again, if you don't want to hear,
W. Curtis Preston:uh, I'm gonna give some spoilers.
W. Curtis Preston:I don't care.
W. Curtis Preston:Like, if you don't wanna hear this stuff, then skip ahead in a few minutes.
W. Curtis Preston:Um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:About five minutes.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, about five minutes.
W. Curtis Preston:Don't take me that well, man.
W. Curtis Preston:I don't know.
W. Curtis Preston:Anyway, I can talk.
W. Curtis Preston:I know how to talk.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, it was a state sponsored, like Russia said, and, and what's interesting about
W. Curtis Preston:this show is that they show both sides.
W. Curtis Preston:They show what's going on in Russia at the time, you know, and Russia basically
W. Curtis Preston:said, We want to provoke the UK to war and we're gonna do a multi-pronged attack.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, social engineering, you know, social media engineering, uh, a cyber
W. Curtis Preston:attack against their infrastructure and a news attack, essentially.
W. Curtis Preston:Fake news
Prasanna Malaiyandi:misinformation.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:campaign.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Misinformation campaign, right.
W. Curtis Preston:Via their own state sponsored news channel.
W. Curtis Preston:And, um, you know, it works right?
W. Curtis Preston:Ultimately, um, the UK.
W. Curtis Preston:Believes that they have no choice.
W. Curtis Preston:They believe that they have been, they have been, uh, that, that, that, that
W. Curtis Preston:what Russia has done has been an act of war, although it's all been cyber and,
W. Curtis Preston:you know, under the covers and everything.
W. Curtis Preston:So they respond with a cyber attack and Russia over, you know, uh, exaggerates
W. Curtis Preston:the effect of the cyber attack.
W. Curtis Preston:It's killing people.
W. Curtis Preston:It's killing people in hospitals, et cetera.
W. Curtis Preston:And then they actually attack the uk.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, it's a.
W. Curtis Preston:Too real,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:But I was gonna say, yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:in 2024.
W. Curtis Preston:There's references to current to people that are currently in politics.
W. Curtis Preston:The, the actual Prime Minister is a fictional prime Minister.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, they actually said that he ous it, uh, uh, Boris,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Hmm.
W. Curtis Preston:um, in, in a bitter contention,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Were they foretelling things?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:I think they were, cuz you know, I think it must
W. Curtis Preston:have been filmed before he resigned.
W. Curtis Preston:But,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:um, but overall, the stuff was all just, there was this one
W. Curtis Preston:scene that um, really, really, it hit home for me and it was where they were.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, there's this, there, there's this new journalist that has
W. Curtis Preston:moved from Russia to London.
W. Curtis Preston:To be on the Russian sponsored channel, you know, that's in London.
W. Curtis Preston:And she gets, sent her very first assignment.
W. Curtis Preston:She gets sent to a place, to a date and time and place, and she's
W. Curtis Preston:told to put on riot gear, and then a, and then a riot happens.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:You know, right behind her the moment she gets there and
W. Curtis Preston:she's like, Did, did, did we?
W. Curtis Preston:Did we, um, Uh, arrange for the counter protestors to show up, and
W. Curtis Preston:her boss is like, uh, we arrange both sides and she shows how she had,
W. Curtis Preston:they have Facebook groups that they started and one is like pro Putin
W. Curtis Preston:and one is against Putin, and they
Prasanna Malaiyandi:but both controlled.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:And they're both controlled by them.
W. Curtis Preston:And then they announced a, we're gonna meet in protest at 10:00 AM at Lester
W. Curtis Preston:Square, whatever it was, you know?
W. Curtis Preston:And they just did it with both groups, not telling them the
W. Curtis Preston:other groups are gonna be there.
W. Curtis Preston:And so then they show up 10 o'clock with the camera.
W. Curtis Preston:Oh look, there's a riot in the middle of London over Russia.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, and that all seemed really like, just a little too real,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It hits.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Does, did it feel when you're watching this, that it's almost as if you're
Prasanna Malaiyandi:watching like live news happening in another part of the world?
W. Curtis Preston:yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:And, and, you know, and then there was this, this moment when the, the
W. Curtis Preston:lady's like, Well, well, this is fake news, like what we just did.
W. Curtis Preston:She's like, Okay, First off, it happened, right?
W. Curtis Preston:We didn't orchestra, you know, we didn't, we didn't.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Hire the people to
Prasanna Malaiyandi:come.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:these are real people that join our groups.
W. Curtis Preston:They, there's a group that thinks Putin's great, and there's a
W. Curtis Preston:group that thinks he's bad.
W. Curtis Preston:These are all real people.
W. Curtis Preston:This is not fake news.
W. Curtis Preston:This actually happened.
W. Curtis Preston:And then she goes, Lady, it's all fake news.
W. Curtis Preston:Our goal is to get it so that everyone thinks everything's a lie.
W. Curtis Preston:And then, uh, then the biggest liar wins.
W. Curtis Preston:And again, I was like, this is just hitting a little too, too close to home.
W. Curtis Preston:But yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:But, but the cyber stuff was, was a core element.
W. Curtis Preston:And what they had was this multi-pronged cyber attack where they had the,
W. Curtis Preston:the one cyber attack that went off and then, The, again, they used
W. Curtis Preston:social engineering against it.
W. Curtis Preston:There was something about a, a, a library that they did something with
W. Curtis Preston:a library and they're like, Well, nobody's gonna look inside the library.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and so the, you know, the new girl, of course, looks inside the library and she
Prasanna Malaiyandi:She's like, Ooh.
W. Curtis Preston:attack.
W. Curtis Preston:And so she's a hero except it turns out there's a third attack and the
W. Curtis Preston:third attack was the worst, right?
W. Curtis Preston:So they, they get this feeling of euphoria, of like, Oh,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:We caught it.
W. Curtis Preston:Haha, yay.
W. Curtis Preston:We caught it.
W. Curtis Preston:There was a third attack that was much, much worse.
W. Curtis Preston:And, um, that results in a severing of relationships between the US and the uk.
W. Curtis Preston:And the show,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Hmm.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Interesting.
W. Curtis Preston:a 75 year information sharing agreement is over.
W. Curtis Preston:It's like you are on your own.
W. Curtis Preston:So now the UK is on their own at a moment when
Prasanna Malaiyandi:When they need, Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Oh, yeah,
W. Curtis Preston:It was pretty, it was pretty good.
W. Curtis Preston:You know, overall the tech was pretty good.
W. Curtis Preston:You know, there was a moment where like, you know, they, they wanted to give the
W. Curtis Preston:girls some busy work and, and they said, I don't know, why don't you just strings it?
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:You know, like strings the executable.
W. Curtis Preston:And so she's looking through the stuff that she sees.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, . And, um, oh, there, there was one little interesting thing that I picked up.
W. Curtis Preston:So there was this, in that strings attack, she gets these three words.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Oh yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I remember.
W. Curtis Preston:yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:And then it turns out there is this thing called what?
W. Curtis Preston:Three words.
W. Curtis Preston:What number?
W. Curtis Preston:Three words.com.
W. Curtis Preston:They've divided the entire world into, uh, three meter segments, three
W. Curtis Preston:meter squared segments, and you can identify any three meter squared
W. Curtis Preston:segment in the world by three words.
W. Curtis Preston:and, and it's a fascinating way to do like GPS coordinates and it's a
W. Curtis Preston:way to basically say like, I'm in a very, I'm in a big field and you can
W. Curtis Preston:meet me at, you know, dog cat goofy.
W. Curtis Preston:Right?
W. Curtis Preston:And, and that would, that would.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Translate.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:2
W. Curtis Preston:what, Three words?
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, that was, I'd never heard of it.
W. Curtis Preston:I was like, I'd done, you know, and I pull it up, I go, Look at that.
W. Curtis Preston:They use an actual app and they use the actual app, like the UI
W. Curtis Preston:of the actual app in the movie.
W. Curtis Preston:I was like, Well, that's pretty cool cuz a lot of times you
W. Curtis Preston:see, they don't, they, they.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:They just build their own.
W. Curtis Preston:right?
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, but overall it was, uh, so back to the topic,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:I thought it was really, really real.
W. Curtis Preston:The idea of state sponsored, you know, attacks is really, really real.
W. Curtis Preston:It's happening.
W. Curtis Preston:And so I can understand Lloyd's wanting to exclude that stuff.
W. Curtis Preston:I do believe it's an undeclared war.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and then, uh, let's move on to the second topic, which is perhaps more.
W. Curtis Preston:Relevant to maybe the average company, I don't know.
W. Curtis Preston:And that is that there is a, another insurance company, it happens to be
W. Curtis Preston:travelers, and they, they were, uh, suing, um, uh, their, so, so that
W. Curtis Preston:Travelers is the insurance company.
W. Curtis Preston:The other company is called SJ Computers.
W. Curtis Preston:They sued in November that travelers owed them far more money than they
W. Curtis Preston:were, than they, than they were getting, They were getting a hundred thousand
W. Curtis Preston:dollars and that they owed nearly $600,000 in a loss due to a successful,
W. Curtis Preston:um, business email Compromise Attack.
W. Curtis Preston:And by the way, the attack just sounds horrible.
W. Curtis Preston:I don't know if you read through the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah, I did.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's, this was on the register as well, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Um, social engineering.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Can't find it.
W. Curtis Preston:well, they basically get, they, they, they hack an, they
W. Curtis Preston:get something to hack an account.
W. Curtis Preston:They send an email to the CEO to authorize a payment, and
W. Curtis Preston:the CEO makes a quick call to.
W. Curtis Preston:Their, their company, like they used a real, they they knew a lot.
W. Curtis Preston:They used the name of a real client of the company, or I
W. Curtis Preston:guess that would be a vendor.
W. Curtis Preston:They used the name of a real vendor of the company, but they just changed
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:Change the phone number.
W. Curtis Preston:then they, they got them to authorize the, the thing, and
W. Curtis Preston:he, he didn't, he, he made a phone call.
W. Curtis Preston:It didn't answer.
W. Curtis Preston:And so they paid like $600,000 to, uh, this other company.
W. Curtis Preston:and what Travelers was saying is, Listen, we have social engineering coverage.
W. Curtis Preston:You paid for social engineering coverage.
W. Curtis Preston:This is social engineering.
W. Curtis Preston:It has a limit of a hundred thousand dollars.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, we're not paying you $600,000.
W. Curtis Preston:They sued, they lost.
W. Curtis Preston:The court very clearly said, Look, this was so, so they, they
W. Curtis Preston:differentiated between a social engineering attack and a cyber attack.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Which is interesting because I had never really considered
Prasanna Malaiyandi:that there are different categories, which makes sense now that you think about it,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:but that there are different categories of the types of crime and given insurance
Prasanna Malaiyandi:companies, they probably have different amounts of coverage, just like your normal
Prasanna Malaiyandi:house insurance or car insurance, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You have different amounts based on the different types and.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It makes sense.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And I'm guessing that someone probably did not read their contracts clearly
Prasanna Malaiyandi:to see what their coverage was.
W. Curtis Preston:the story that I read, It looked like they did read the contract.
W. Curtis Preston:They, they, and they filed it the way they filed because they did read
W. Curtis Preston:their contract , meaning, meaning they wanted it to be covered on the other.
W. Curtis Preston:And I, I know I, I, um, there was an insurance deal that I was involved with.
W. Curtis Preston:I gotta speak, uh, what's the word?
W. Curtis Preston:High level here.
W. Curtis Preston:But there was an insurance deal that I was involved with where the insurance
W. Curtis Preston:company, Wanted to pay far less that it, it was a company that, that suffered,
W. Curtis Preston:um, a disaster recovery situation due to a flood of, uh, the River.
W. Curtis Preston:The company actually did a really good job where they had essentially
W. Curtis Preston:relocated their IT infrastructure to an alternate, like a, you
W. Curtis Preston:know, a, what do we call those?
W. Curtis Preston:Like a cola.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Colo.
W. Curtis Preston:And they had done it in such a way that there was like almost
W. Curtis Preston:no downtime, but by doing it that way.
W. Curtis Preston:And they basically, they knew this flood was coming and they.
W. Curtis Preston:In advance, and it was essentially miraculous.
W. Curtis Preston:The company had done a really great job of protecting their business,
W. Curtis Preston:but the coverage that they had, basically it said, We will cover
W. Curtis Preston:moving your computers, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Like moving them to a high ground and then moving them back.
W. Curtis Preston:There is no coverage for business continuation.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:And so they were, they were suing for, it was just like this, where they
W. Curtis Preston:were suing for a much bigger amount.
W. Curtis Preston:And they're saying, You don't, it's not covered in this,
W. Curtis Preston:in this, um, in this thing.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:You know, So when, when insurance companies write insurance, they,
W. Curtis Preston:they, you know, they, they write it so they don't have to pay.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Or they understand the risks and the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:likelihood and all the rest of that and charge you accordingly, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:And, uh, and, and you know, just like in this story, the company in my
W. Curtis Preston:story, they lost because it was very clear what the difference between
W. Curtis Preston:physically moving the computers and moving them the way they did.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, you know, and, and it was literally like this was, this
W. Curtis Preston:made this look like peanuts.
W. Curtis Preston:It was like, it was millions of dollars.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, and they, they were gonna get, Like 200,000 or something.
W. Curtis Preston:It was something really small.
W. Curtis Preston:But, um, I, I think that the key here, if we go back to sort of the,
W. Curtis Preston:the core element of our podcast is that you should be creating a cyber
W. Curtis Preston:defense and a data defense mechanism that you shouldn't have to be reaching
W. Curtis Preston:out to your insurance company.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:If you, if you follow and, and I'm gonna go, I still think that the, the episode
W. Curtis Preston:that, the episodes that we did with, um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Snorkel 42,
W. Curtis Preston:I still think that his multipronged, these are the things
W. Curtis Preston:that you should be doing already.
W. Curtis Preston:You know, that approach of, you know, Obviously, obviously monitoring for
W. Curtis Preston:bad stuff happening, obviously having, you know, an intrusion detection
W. Curtis Preston:system and all of that stuff, but then designing your infrastructure
W. Curtis Preston:in such a way that if and when you get an attack, it, it can't spread
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:Blast radius is reduced.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, it reduces the blast radius and then you need to,
W. Curtis Preston:uh, because if you, if a single system got infected and then it's unable to
W. Curtis Preston:infect the rest of the data center, that's not that big of a recovery.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Even if it's the most critical system in your enterprise, that's
W. Curtis Preston:still not that big of a recovery
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:Assuming you have backups,
W. Curtis Preston:as well, Yes.
W. Curtis Preston:Well, any recovery is a bigger recovery if you don't have backups and assuming
W. Curtis Preston:you have, And then when we get to the part of the, the disaster, assuming
W. Curtis Preston:that you have a disaster recovery system that is a modern day system that
W. Curtis Preston:is able to bring your infrastructure.
W. Curtis Preston:In a relatively short period of time.
W. Curtis Preston:Um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:That you've
Prasanna Malaiyandi:tested.
W. Curtis Preston:What's that?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:That you've
W. Curtis Preston:And it's tested.
W. Curtis Preston:That is, that is documented and you have tested, and I think
W. Curtis Preston:it should be automated, right?
W. Curtis Preston:There are, there are companies and yes, Druva is one of those
W. Curtis Preston:companies that provides a fully automated disaster recovery system.
W. Curtis Preston:We happen to use the cloud that you do, you know, you do a one-time setup upfront.
W. Curtis Preston:Then in the case of either testing or declaring a disaster, you literally push
W. Curtis Preston:one button and then boom, you fail over to the, to the other data center, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Well, it fail over to the cloud.
W. Curtis Preston:um, you know, we're not the only company.
W. Curtis Preston:In fact, we don't even have the best RTO there.
W. Curtis Preston:There are companies that, you know, we, I mean, ours is 15 to 20 minutes.
W. Curtis Preston:That's pretty dang good.
W. Curtis Preston:But there are companies that do that in, in, you know, one
W. Curtis Preston:minute or less than one minute.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and I, I think that.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, if that's what you need, then you should go to those companies, right?
W. Curtis Preston:But if 15 to 20 minutes it's good enough for you to say no to a
W. Curtis Preston:ransomware company, then I would recommend you check out Druva.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, I, I think it's the beauty of us running in the cloud, being a full
W. Curtis Preston:SaaS service and all of that stuff.
W. Curtis Preston:Right?
W. Curtis Preston:So I just, I want you, That's, I think the takeaway to get from this
W. Curtis Preston:is to not, is to not focus on the.
W. Curtis Preston:Two thirds of the podcast of like the details of what these wordings mean
W. Curtis Preston:and ah, you know, are we gonna be covered and we're not gonna be covered?
W. Curtis Preston:Do it so you don't need to coverage.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Well, I would say do it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So it's kind of like, as I look at it, like medical insurance sometimes, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Where you're looking at it to protect you from catastrophic, Like
Prasanna Malaiyandi:something gets out for some reason and your blast radius is no longer
Prasanna Malaiyandi:just that one server, but everything.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So it's there just in case you need it, right, to provide you that
Prasanna Malaiyandi:coverage or whatever else it is.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:But for the most part, you should try to not ever have to use it.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:it's more like home insurance than medical insurance.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Actually,
W. Curtis Preston:say again,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I would say it's more like home insurance
Prasanna Malaiyandi:than medical insurance.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:It's more like, yeah, it's more like home insurance.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:Protect yourself, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:Plan.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:Protect yourself.
W. Curtis Preston:yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:That, that's the thing is, is to, is to plan for this.
W. Curtis Preston:I think that the main point of cyber insurance would be to
W. Curtis Preston:have a person in your corner.
W. Curtis Preston:When, uh, Tony from Special Logic talked about what they went through, they had
W. Curtis Preston:a company, a cyber specialist in their corner to help them out of the scenario.
W. Curtis Preston:That's, um, that's what I like about cyber insurance is to have, if there's a
W. Curtis Preston:clause in there that gives you access to
Prasanna Malaiyandi:An expert.
W. Curtis Preston:that have done this.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, an expert.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, And, um, and then you do need that multi-pronged defense system to protect
W. Curtis Preston:from on the front end and to protect it from being able to, you know, to limit
W. Curtis Preston:the blast radius and protect it from being able, you know, like the idea of not
W. Curtis Preston:using recently used domains and not using domains with these really long names.
W. Curtis Preston:And, um, by the way, in the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:E dns.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I like that one from, Did you remember the guy?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:I like that at a lot the, in the movie, the, the command and control
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Uhhuh.
W. Curtis Preston:uh, it was a very simple, like, like the, like we're
W. Curtis Preston:in, That's all I wanted to say.
W. Curtis Preston:That's all I wanted to say.
W. Curtis Preston:And the way they did it was a, like on a Facebook page,
W. Curtis Preston:which is interesting, Right?
W. Curtis Preston:And then they, and then some, and then somebody else is watching
W. Curtis Preston:the likes on that Facebook page.
W. Curtis Preston:So,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Well, if you think about it, right, most people are browsing
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Facebook and these common things, and now you have a domain that's commonly used.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:How do you differentiate that traffic?
W. Curtis Preston:And yet nobody should be going to Facebook from a server.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yep.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:So that, yeah, that, that's the kind of stuff that, um, that,
W. Curtis Preston:uh, Snorkel 42 talked about.
W. Curtis Preston:All right.
W. Curtis Preston:Well, thank you very much, uh, Prasanna for, you know, what, what did we do
W. Curtis Preston:deciphering the latest news in cyber
W. Curtis Preston:insurance
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah, I think that seems accurate.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Thanks Curtis, and good luck with the car.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:We will have an update next week on the
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Well, one way or the other, we will have an
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:next week.
W. Curtis Preston:All right.
W. Curtis Preston:Thanks to our listeners, and remember to subscribe so that you can restore it all.