Speaker 00:00:00
I have about 40 IOT devices in my home that generates some kind of data.
Speaker:How many IOT devices does your organization have?
Speaker:And do you know how many of them create data?
Speaker:That's important to you?
Speaker:Where is that data being stored.
Speaker:And is it being backed up in any way?
Speaker:How do you decide which devices to back up?
Speaker:How would you back them up?
Speaker:Even if you wanted to.
Speaker:Uh, this episode's probably going to make you a bit uncomfortable, but I promise you
Speaker:we'll give you the best answers we can.
Speaker:To these really important questions.
Speaker:Hi, I'm Debbie Curtis precedent, AKA Mr.
Speaker:Backup.
Speaker:And for 30 years, I've had a single passion for helping
Speaker:others protect their data from disasters and lately cyber attacks.
Speaker:Each episode, my co-hosts and I dive deep into one specific area of data protection.
Speaker:This week's episode will be the internet of things.
Speaker:Welcome to the backup wrap-up.
Speaker:Welcome to the show.
Speaker:I'm your host, w Curtis Preston, a k a, Mr.
Speaker:Backup.
Speaker:And I have with me the guy who makes me sweat way
Speaker:too much.
Speaker:Prasanna Malaiyandi how's it going?
Speaker:Prasanna?
Speaker:I am good Curtis.
Speaker:Well, remember with sweat you also need to make sure you say, hydrate, which I
Speaker:think you are currently doing right now.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Although, I don't know if people will consider that
Speaker:does not consider coffee
Speaker:hydration.
Speaker:I.
Speaker:it's a liquid of some sort.
Speaker:it is a liquid, but it's a diuretic, which
Speaker:I think it means that more water goes out than comes in
Speaker:So It's not actually helpful.
Speaker:want.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:but yeah, making me get up at God awful hours of the day to go walking with you,
Speaker:even though I don't live in the same town.
Speaker:What's that about?
Speaker:It's good though.
Speaker:It's good though, right?
Speaker:Getting out, getting some fresh air, running into spiderwebs,
Speaker:you're running into spiderwebs is correct.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:it's time to talk about the news the day, backup wise, and I found
Speaker:two stories, the first of which I'm so excited to talk about.
Speaker:of course you are.
Speaker:Of course I am.
Speaker:And that is that i b m is releasing 150 terabyte, tape.
Speaker:So the TSS 1170, which is the.
Speaker:It's the 35 92 form cartridge.
Speaker:They've gotten a lot of mileage out of that cartridge, the TSS 1170 has
Speaker:50 terabyte of native capacity and 150 terabytes of capacity with compression.
Speaker:Now that's interesting.
Speaker:That number, again, I've been around tape a long time.
Speaker:Typically that number was like two x, right?
Speaker:if you look in the L T O world, typically the, you have the native number and
Speaker:then you have the compression number.
Speaker:And typically the compression number was two x i B M has a
Speaker:different compression algorithm.
Speaker:They've typically done two and a half x.
Speaker:They're now apparently saying that their compression is so
Speaker:good, they're getting three x.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:and the thing I think we should mention for some of our listeners,
Speaker:right.
Speaker:I'm sure a lot of our listeners have heard of L T O, if you have
Speaker:heard about tape, but this is just a different type of format.
Speaker:I'd say it, it looks similar in size to an L t O, but it's physically looks you,
Speaker:you would definitely, like at a glance.
Speaker:Know the difference
Speaker:between an L t O and a 35 92, but they, can run in the same tape library.
Speaker:In fact, there are mixed media libraries that have both l t
Speaker:O and 35 92 media in there.
Speaker:I'm sure our friends over at Spectra Logic would be happy to tell you
Speaker:about that.
Speaker:I'd say it it's an enterprise.
Speaker:Class tape drive, that probably beats l t O in a number of numbers, but it
Speaker:probably also beats l t O in cost.
Speaker:And by beating it in cost, I mean it costs more
Speaker:Oh,
Speaker:one concern is that i b m is the sole supplier, whereas with L T O
Speaker:you have a number
Speaker:an open format, right?
Speaker:it, right?
Speaker:I, I don't know.
Speaker:The question is, do you like the, do you like what that tape drive has to offer?
Speaker:And are you willing to live with i b M as your sole supplier?
Speaker:It's not like they're a company that is liable to go outta
Speaker:business anytime soon, but,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:the other question I was gonna ask you, Curtis, so you said this
Speaker:has 150 terabytes of compressed.
Speaker:Capacity.
Speaker:And that's quite a lot.
Speaker:And I know in the article, they mentioned that yes, it is useful
Speaker:for like archiving use cases for enterprises, other things like that.
Speaker:If we look at the l t o, like the latest and greatest generation,
Speaker:how much capacity does that hold?
Speaker:Do
Speaker:The LT O nine capacity for comparison holds 45 terabytes of compressed capacity.
Speaker:So this is
Speaker:Wow,
Speaker:times the size, more than three times the size of the most recent L t O cartridge.
Speaker:yeah,
Speaker:That's huge.
Speaker:That.
Speaker:Yeah, literally
Speaker:it's huge.
Speaker:Both in the size, you know, and both in the, you know, you know what I'm trying to
Speaker:say, in the figurative sense of that word.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So it is a very big tape.
Speaker:The concern I always have with tape is whether or not we can make it
Speaker:happy speed-wise, Tape has a native speed of 400 megabytes per second.
Speaker:That is 1.2 gigabytes per second, with compression that, that's that
Speaker:wonderful three x compression.
Speaker:Compare it again to the l t o nine spec with it's, it goes up to 400
Speaker:megabytes per second with compression.
Speaker:That is a huge amount of data to feed into the tape.
Speaker:And if you don't feed it that speed, it will not be happy.
Speaker:It will shoe shine, it will have media errors, it will have all these
Speaker:problems.
Speaker:That's what I spent my whole career, you know, working with, was try to,
Speaker:how to make these tape drives happy.
Speaker:the reason why it's bigger.
Speaker:Essentially the same form factor is that they put the bits closer
Speaker:together on tape by putting the bits closer together on tape.
Speaker:And by having a linear format, meaning that the, that the, the bits are
Speaker:recorded in a line on the tape, as opposed to helical, which, goes back
Speaker:in the time that makes the tape faster.
Speaker:So my point is, yes, it's very, very big, but it's also very,
Speaker:very fast, and you really need to build that into the Design.
Speaker:you need to make sure you have a pipe fast enough
Speaker:You've gotta have a big ass pipe.
Speaker:You gotta have stuff that I do not think this is something
Speaker:designed for backup and recovery.
Speaker:it's for archiving, right?
Speaker:Like they said.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Archiving and
Speaker:mass storage.
Speaker:Mass storage.
Speaker:So anyway, but fun to talk about.
Speaker:I'd love to
Speaker:have one to
Speaker:play with.
Speaker:Feel free to send me one
Speaker:Well, I was just gonna say tape is not dead.
Speaker:Although
Speaker:most people would like you to think that, right?
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:There's more tape sold today than ever before.
Speaker:People just don't understand that.
Speaker:so this next story from TechTarget talks about ai, right?
Speaker:And I know AI is everywhere, right?
Speaker:You can't go a single day without hearing something about AI this, AI that, right?
Speaker:Open AI and everything else, and chat, G P T.
Speaker:So AI has now started making its way into data protection and backup software.
Speaker:So Cohesity recently added AI to its support portal for backups.
Speaker:And it's interesting because I've always thought, what are you gonna use AI for?
Speaker:Especially in backups, right?
Speaker:It's Hey, I have this job to do, but I could totally see it being used to help
Speaker:you because failures happen, right?
Speaker:And you need help try to figure out what went wrong and.
Speaker:As a backup company, you have all this information.
Speaker:Why, as a user, do I have to go like browsing support pages
Speaker:or filing a help desk ticket?
Speaker:Why can't you just quickly tell me how to solve my problem based on all
Speaker:the information you already have?
Speaker:I haven't tried this particular, tool, but, I, what it sounds like is they're
Speaker:building it into their support tool.
Speaker:And so perhaps you could have a.
Speaker:Resolution offered to you for your problems.
Speaker:Like I have these following errors, I have this particular problem.
Speaker:And you could have, if you've got a data lake billed by that, you
Speaker:know, with all of the resolutions of the past, they could give you a.
Speaker:Potential resolutions to your problem.
Speaker:That certainly seems interesting.
Speaker:my, my own personal take here, I love that they're trying to
Speaker:use, make use of this technology.
Speaker:I don't know about you, but when I go to a website and as soon as
Speaker:I
Speaker:was just gonna say, yeah.
Speaker:talking to a chat bot, I'm like, person, person.
Speaker:Customer representative
Speaker:Customer representative.
Speaker:I don't wanna talk to Angie, the chat bot,
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:I'm old.
Speaker:maybe the youngins, maybe they'll love this idea of talking.
Speaker:They don't wanna talk to a real person.
Speaker:I do know that
Speaker:I prefer chat support over talking to a person.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:I like the asynchronous nature, of it.
Speaker:I just, I my only complaint there is make sure your chat bott has a
Speaker:little ding when you get back to me,
Speaker:right?
Speaker:Because I'm gonna move on.
Speaker:Asynchronous nature means that they're doing like three or
Speaker:four people at the same time.
Speaker:guess what?
Speaker:So am I, I'm doing three or four things
Speaker:at the same time, so just let me know when you talk to me.
Speaker:Do a.
Speaker:yep.
Speaker:Otherwise you have a tab and you're like, where did that, why am I
Speaker:not hearing back from the person?
Speaker:So that I don't suddenly go, oh crap, what happened to that support?
Speaker:And then you go back and you see messages.
Speaker:Are you still there?
Speaker:Are you still there?
Speaker:I will be closing this ticket due to your non-response.
Speaker:Dang it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:and I could see like this use case, because like you said, there are
Speaker:so many other industries, companies who use it for support, right?
Speaker:It is a very common use case to have a chat bot.
Speaker:So it's not surprising to see.
Speaker:Cohesity taking this approach and just focusing it on their support portal.
Speaker:'cause it also helps 'em with their costs.
Speaker:And it helps 'em with the customers.
Speaker:Quickly finding the answers that they need.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:For the customers that want it, it'll be . It'll be
Speaker:interesting to see if customers enjoy it.
Speaker:Well, that's the news of the day.
Speaker:We need a thing.
Speaker:We need a little chime, bong, binging bong.
Speaker:So in our continued backup to basic series this week, we're gonna talk
Speaker:about the Internet of things or i o t.
Speaker:do you, how many i o OT devices do you think you have in your house?
Speaker:14.
Speaker:But that's a very specific number.
Speaker:Do you know how many I have?
Speaker:Because I know, because I've been working on my wifi
Speaker:127.
Speaker:no, it's like 37, but it's because of
Speaker:all of the plugs.
Speaker:It's because of all the smart plugs that I went around with,
Speaker:many of which I'm now dcom.
Speaker:But by the way, if anybody's interested in buying a bunch of smart.
Speaker:Reach out to me.
Speaker:When we say what is what,
Speaker:What is that iot device?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:when we talk about IOT devices, right?
Speaker:It meets a whole bunch of different things.
Speaker:Most people think of it like you said, right?
Speaker:It's your streaming devices like your Apple
Speaker:TV or your ROKU Box.
Speaker:It's
Speaker:your TVs if they're smart, connected, right?
Speaker:Your smart TVs, it's your smart switches or smart plugs that
Speaker:you use for turning things on.
Speaker:It's your ring device, it's your security cameras, it's your Alexa
Speaker:slash Google devices, right?
Speaker:All of these things are what people normally think about as iot, which
Speaker:totally makes sense, but there's a whole bunch of things that people
Speaker:don't always think about, especially in a corporate environment, like your
Speaker:sensors for your doors, you have various things measuring, say, humidity or
Speaker:things that are used for your factories.
Speaker:That are all internet of thing devices, right?
Speaker:There are devices that are getting a task done, but people just don't
Speaker:consider those to be internet of things.
Speaker:And all of these things are gathering some data or doing something, generating
Speaker:some data and sending it off somewhere.
Speaker:And usually these are sending it off to the cloud, right?
Speaker:Some backend service, right?
Speaker:Or to some server sitting locally on premises.
Speaker:But It's doing something.
Speaker:It's creating things and it's sending it somewhere, right?
Speaker:Actually, raise your device right now.
Speaker:cause that is an
Speaker:iot.
Speaker:a smart coffee mug, that keeps the temperature of my coffee at
Speaker:the perfect temperature.
Speaker:so I would say that IOT devices, any device with a network connection.
Speaker:How about that?
Speaker:I and typically we would exclude from that definition, normal computers.
Speaker:Like we're not generally talking about servers and computers
Speaker:and laptops and cell phones.
Speaker:We're talking about, like you said, like ring cameras and smart
Speaker:streetlights and my, my coffee mug.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:how's that definition?
Speaker:I think that works.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But in our world, I'm only concerned with one category of these devices,
Speaker:and that is devices that create data and send that data elsewhere.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:Which is probably most of them.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Well, your coffee mug, may not be
Speaker:that type of device.
Speaker:yeah, it's not right.
Speaker:I'm thinking about like, well, I, I think they all send data.
Speaker:It's just, it, would that send data that you might care about
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:exactly.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:my smart TV sends data, but it's just data about what shows I watched
Speaker:or
Speaker:which you don't care.
Speaker:And my smart plugs send data about my electrical usage,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:which is interesting.
Speaker:But if it all went away, I really wouldn't care.
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:and I don't think my coffee mug is storing the historical use of what I drank.
Speaker:that might be scary.
Speaker:Let's think about a variety of devices that do this.
Speaker:So things like, obviously your ring camera, your, um, what, what
Speaker:other, you know, uh, and, and, and various other security cameras.
Speaker:This is a big iot
Speaker:category,
Speaker:Use case.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:what other kind of smart devices that we can think of.
Speaker:there's like things that detect humidity right in a factory
Speaker:or other things like that.
Speaker:Things that might be detecting sensors.
Speaker:Like even if you think about like cars, right?
Speaker:Smart cars, right?
Speaker:Those are IOTs, right?
Speaker:So
Speaker:a vehicle generates a lot of data.
Speaker:That data.
Speaker:Could be useful to you, right?
Speaker:As you wanna know your driving habits and things like that.
Speaker:But it's definitely important to the manufacturer as they start to build.
Speaker:I know we talked about AI earlier, as they start to build models and
Speaker:other things like that, right?
Speaker:You need that data in order to be able to do that, so that becomes
Speaker:important for the manufacturer.
Speaker:exactly, and again, Like I'm thinking about like I have
Speaker:a smart thermostat, right?
Speaker:My smart thermostat sends data, but again, it's just data
Speaker:that allows it to do its job.
Speaker:It's not data that I think of in terms of data that I'm, that
Speaker:see, I'm the opposite of you.
Speaker:really?
Speaker:I actually like my thermostats data because I actually go back
Speaker:and see how often did it run?
Speaker:when did it run right?
Speaker:when I want to look and see, okay, how many hours and how does it compare
Speaker:to like the average that they see?
Speaker:Am I using more heat or more air conditioning than other people?
Speaker:Those sort of stats I get information about.
Speaker:All right, so that means that you value that data.
Speaker:The, and this is really, I think the key here is that people
Speaker:and businesses are different.
Speaker:They have different preferences about the data that they want to keep on one end.
Speaker:I really want to keep the, The footage from my ring camera, it's been
Speaker:invaluable multiple times in the last.
Speaker:I don't know, a few months where it's like Amazon said they delivered a
Speaker:package and we can pull up the ring camera and see that they did not right.
Speaker:If the, if that data's not there, I'm not able to do that job.
Speaker:The, uh, and of course if, if something more nefarious, I just, as we're
Speaker:recording this episode, they just caught this murderer after a two week, uh,
Speaker:he, he was escaped, convicted murderer.
Speaker:Stabbed his girlfriend to death.
Speaker:He escaped and he was on the lamb for over two weeks.
Speaker:They just caught him.
Speaker:And the way they caught him was ring camera footage.
Speaker:He would walk by people's ring cameras that would get reported.
Speaker:actually he broke into a house that had an alarm, that's
Speaker:another iot device that set off.
Speaker:A bunch of alarms and, while they didn't find him at the house, that allowed
Speaker:them to circle their, uh, to, I'm sorry, to concentrate their, their efforts.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:They ended up finding him with a heat seeking drone.
Speaker:that's another one we did talk about.
Speaker:Yeah, drones.
Speaker:yeah.
Speaker:there are so many types of these devices.
Speaker:I can't possibly fathom 'em all, but I want to focus on, I'm gonna
Speaker:see if I can categorize these.
Speaker:You tell me how I do here.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Police body cams versus my ring cam.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:And, and I'm gonna make a third category just on-prem security cameras that that
Speaker:may have a, an internet connection, but they're not uploading, they're storing it
Speaker:only locally.
Speaker:So there's three categories there.
Speaker:and here's my definition of these categories.
Speaker:So ring that thing doesn't store anything.
Speaker:it
Speaker:The device,
Speaker:What's that?
Speaker:The
Speaker:device.
Speaker:the device does not store any data.
Speaker:I have specified.
Speaker:I only want it to with a ring.
Speaker:you can actually zone in.
Speaker:So I've got it.
Speaker:My ring camera sees.
Speaker:My neighbor's house and the street, but I don't care about my
Speaker:neighbor's house in the street.
Speaker:I've got the little motion detector thing set.
Speaker:I only wanna see people to come in my yard.
Speaker:I only want it to kick off and record people to come to my yard.
Speaker:And obviously people that ring my doorbell.
Speaker:Then it records that data and then that data is, is, uh, sent
Speaker:up to the cloud.
Speaker:The point is that the data is continually stored in the cloud and a cloud service.
Speaker:That's one discussion.
Speaker:The second is the police body cams.
Speaker:it's a locally recording device that's recording, the, what's
Speaker:going on with that police officer.
Speaker:And then at the end of each shift, they, uh, have a device that they
Speaker:Pop that body cam in and then that transfers that data to something magic.
Speaker:And I'm sure every police station does something.
Speaker:And by the way, the only way I actually figured this out was by
Speaker:watching t modern Police shows.
Speaker:They show them at the end of each shift was popping the camera.
Speaker:And uh, and I realized, I was like, oh, I never thought about that.
Speaker:of course that's the way it is, right?
Speaker:because you want all of that footage.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:Um, and then the third is, This idea of a device that is recording
Speaker:data but doesn't have the capacity to get, at least there's no process
Speaker:created to get that data uploaded.
Speaker:How did I do?
Speaker:Did I leave?
Speaker:What do you think?
Speaker:And by the way, it doesn't have to be video data, it's just any type of
Speaker:data,
Speaker:right?
Speaker:And these are the categories of devices that we actually care about because this
Speaker:is generating some data that we care
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So the categories are, the first two are basically ca devices
Speaker:that they're all devices, only
Speaker:devices that create data that we care about is
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Yeah, that's what I, that's
Speaker:So the first two are devices that there's a, there is already a process
Speaker:defined to get the data somewhere.
Speaker:And then the third one is the data's only locally stored and held.
Speaker:and then
Speaker:there is a process
Speaker:Yeah, no, I think those are the three options.
Speaker:okay.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:So what do we think about that first one from a data protection standpoint?
Speaker:My ring cam, let's not say ring cam, but let's say it's a more important device.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That is creating data that is now being stored only in a cloud service.
Speaker:What do we think about that?
Speaker:So this, I go back to all the discussions we've had about SaaS,
Speaker:right?
Speaker:Which is, yeah, the data's up there.
Speaker:Hopefully they, the . Company, the vendor who owns the camera, right?
Speaker:Or who created the camera, is providing the facilities to make
Speaker:sure, okay, are things protected?
Speaker:Are they available?
Speaker:Are they being backed up?
Speaker:All the rest of that, right?
Speaker:But the question is for these, right?
Speaker:Usually it's such a low cost thing that . You're not always sure what they're doing.
Speaker:And there are so many vendors, like typically, right?
Speaker:They might charge you like, I think Ring charges $3 a month per camera
Speaker:if you want the capabilities to record and go back 30 days, right?
Speaker:But there are some companies, right, that charge less.
Speaker:There's some companies that offer it for free.
Speaker:And so the question always becomes, if you offer it for free,
Speaker:what corners are you cutting?
Speaker:and can you trust them to actually protect your data?
Speaker:Now, I think a lot of these vendors give you the option to download
Speaker:the recordings if you want.
Speaker:But who actually does that?
Speaker:Nobody.
Speaker:Literally
Speaker:no one.
Speaker:Not even me.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:So I think that's where it's good that it's out there.
Speaker:So it's not a single point of failure on premises.
Speaker:So you have the data up there and it's available everywhere, right?
Speaker:You could pull up your footage from your phone, from your
Speaker:laptop, from wherever else.
Speaker:But there are some downsides.
Speaker:Yeah, so I, I'd say my general advice there, assuming again, we're
Speaker:using Ring Cam, but only to help you understand the device, there
Speaker:are probably hundreds of devices
Speaker:that create really important corporate data.
Speaker:For an organization that is then copied up to only a SaaS service.
Speaker:And my answer to that from a data protection standpoint will be the same
Speaker:as every SaaS service that we talk about.
Speaker:so the question is just make sure you're having a conversation with that vendor and
Speaker:see what the data protection options are.
Speaker:Don't just assume that because it's a SaaS service, they're protecting the data.
Speaker:'cause they probably aren't.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Okay, the second one, it's a little bit harder, I think, to advise because you've
Speaker:got
Speaker:a system on, you're getting the data.
Speaker:if it's like what I described, and again, we're using these just as an
Speaker:examples, but if it's like what I described with the body cams where
Speaker:at the end they pop the thing out of their vests and they pop it into this,
Speaker:there's like a wall of these things.
Speaker:They just pop it in there and it does two things.
Speaker:It charges the, the camera
Speaker:for the next shift, and it also downloads the video onto their video system.
Speaker:I think in that case it's probably being stored in a locally accessed
Speaker:system, which kind of makes it like the second or like the third device.
Speaker:So what, we'll get to that in a minute, but I'm, what I want to focus
Speaker:on here is that you have this device that's creating data out in the field.
Speaker:That isn't that unlike the first device, that data isn't
Speaker:automatically being transferred up.
Speaker:I think, again, an example that I can think of, the first device is I knew
Speaker:an engineering company that had an iPad based system that they went, when
Speaker:they went around, they took pictures of what was going on in the field.
Speaker:Those pictures were automatically uploaded
Speaker:to their cloud system that they write.
Speaker:So that's the kind of thing
Speaker:it
Speaker:was instantaneous.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Instantaneous.
Speaker:But the type of device that I'm talking about here is you have a device that
Speaker:creates the data out there in the field and it has no internet connection, and
Speaker:then you have a way to suck that data in.
Speaker:just make sure that whatever that is, whatever that system is,
Speaker:because it's going to be critical, that system is being protected,
Speaker:here's the question.
Speaker:How many police stations, since we're talking about body cams, how
Speaker:many police stations do you think actually back up that body cam footage?
Speaker:To a reasonable degree,
Speaker:I got nothing.
Speaker:I
Speaker:You have no data one way or another, but.
Speaker:yeah, I don't know it, I think it depends on, Some of the police
Speaker:stations were forced to do these body cams and others are like really
Speaker:thinking of them as a really good
Speaker:tool and others are like hating them, like
Speaker:any IT budget, it's a prioritization thing,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But I was just thinking about like, how many times have you heard of
Speaker:like body cam footage gong missing,
Speaker:yeah, I can't think of another example of this type of device.
Speaker:It could be like iot devices.
Speaker:Sometimes you're out in the field like gathering results, like you're in a
Speaker:remote location and you come back to a central base and then it uploads the data.
Speaker:It could be even pictures, right?
Speaker:Like your
Speaker:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker:The pictures.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Except that in your scenario, the pictures aren't automatically
Speaker:uploaded with an internet connection.
Speaker:Instead of buying iPads with the mobile signal, they bought wifi only iPads.
Speaker:So the data all uploads.
Speaker:When you get
Speaker:back, just make sure that wherever that data's going gets protected.
Speaker:It's or another example is like you see a lot of like
Speaker:professional photographers, right?
Speaker:They shoot with digital s SLRs, right?
Speaker:And typically they don't have wifi connection, so
Speaker:it's stored on a card, right?
Speaker:They take the card back in the night to the camp, right?
Speaker:Then they upload it potentially, or we'll get to the third case, right?
Speaker:Which is probably more likely what they end up doing.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:All right, so the third case, and what I really am thinking about
Speaker:here is I really am thinking about digital security footage.
Speaker:Of which there is so much now, right?
Speaker:It used to be not everybody could afford, right.
Speaker:Um, you know, uh, security cameras, right?
Speaker:But now suddenly everybody's got HD security cameras and they have, it
Speaker:doesn't cost a ton of money to create.
Speaker:Um, you know, basically there's companies that for a couple thousand dollars you
Speaker:get a, a, you know, a purpose-built system that has a, has a computer with, with a
Speaker:disc drive on it, and then it has you.
Speaker:And, and it supports, like one, I was just looking at, um, the, the
Speaker:church where my wife and I met.
Speaker:They, they have a school there and they had an I, uh, they had a.
Speaker:This digital camera system that supported up to, I think it was 16 cameras,
Speaker:and you just buy the, the p o e cameras,
Speaker:right?
Speaker:that's power over ethernet and, piece of cake, you're off and running and it, and
Speaker:it's sort of self-contained.
Speaker:The concern that I have here, and this is what I wanted to talk about, So having
Speaker:worked with a number of these systems, I.
Speaker:Murphy's Law applies the chance that you have, the footage that you're
Speaker:looking for is inversely proportional to how much you want that footage.
Speaker:I can remember many times where vandalism happened, theft happened.
Speaker:Smash and grabs happen like full on like hardcore vandalization
Speaker:of the inside of a building.
Speaker:And 90% of the time, we'd go, we're
Speaker:It
Speaker:oh, the camera was, wasn't working that week.
Speaker:there, the reason why, without going into detail, the reason
Speaker:why, was looking at the video.
Speaker:System was, there was an incident that happened at the school and we
Speaker:went to pull up the camera footage and we found out that of the 16 cameras,
Speaker:the one camera that wasn't working,
Speaker:was the
Speaker:Yeah, that
Speaker:you wanted.
Speaker:yeah.
Speaker:the concern that I have is, If this is a device that's creating important data, and
Speaker:video is an example of, it's, it can be, it's data that no one cares about until
Speaker:Until they care about it.
Speaker:until they really care about it.
Speaker:it's interesting.
Speaker:It has the opposite value of most data.
Speaker:Most data is really important while I'm working on it.
Speaker:While it's being created.
Speaker:And then the moment I'm done with this document, I couldn't care less, right?
Speaker:I'm gonna put it in Google Docs.
Speaker:I'm never gonna look at it
Speaker:again.
Speaker:This is data where we're making so much data and it has no value.
Speaker:And then three weeks from now we're like, Hey, do anybody got any footage of
Speaker:that, that room when this thing happened?
Speaker:And you're like, let me see.
Speaker:And the answer's no.
Speaker:What do we think about this?
Speaker:this?
Speaker:is a real problematic,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And I think, like you said, you should back it up.
Speaker:The challenge becomes whether it's obvious when you are using the systems that, is
Speaker:there facilities to tell you how to back things up, what you need to do, or is it
Speaker:just yeah, everything's self-contained.
Speaker:Nothing I need to worry about until things break.
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:I think it's, I think it's like the SaaS category.
Speaker:I just want you to have this conversation upfront.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Is there any availability built into the system?
Speaker:Is there any ability to have more than one copy of the data?
Speaker:it can be problematic to have more than one copy offsite because video,
Speaker:it's, they have 16 HD video cameras.
Speaker:Do you know how much data that is?
Speaker:And if they had a, an, and I, an internet connection, and then that data was
Speaker:uploaded to a cloud server somewhere.
Speaker:They'd hit their cap, their data cap within a day.
Speaker:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker:So it can be real problematic and DDU doesn't help.
Speaker:Why?
Speaker:Why does DDU
Speaker:not help Prasann?
Speaker:Dupe does not help with video.
Speaker:Why
Speaker:Of how video works, because typically how video works, right?
Speaker:You have one frame and then it's a changes to the next frame.
Speaker:And so there really isn't a lot of duplication between frames.
Speaker:D ddu?
Speaker:I would say DDU doesn't work 'cause there's no dup,
Speaker:right?
Speaker:There's no DDU looks
Speaker:like finding.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:There is compression and there are compression algorithms that
Speaker:help with security camera footage specifically, that is able to detect
Speaker:the similar things between frames.
Speaker:I think they call 'em Codex.
Speaker:There.
Speaker:It can be really problematic.
Speaker:So the best I can say for you for many of these is to see if
Speaker:you can create an on-prem backup.
Speaker:This is, I'm gonna violate my usual rules, right?
Speaker:Basically because the alternative is near impossible.
Speaker:It's not possible.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:so see if you can create an on-prem backup.
Speaker:Many of these servers, I'm gonna say all of these servers are either based
Speaker:on Windows or they're based on Linux, and hopefully you will be able to like
Speaker:install some kind of something on that box to then copy the data to another box.
Speaker:The facility, and then it just becomes in the event of something really bad,
Speaker:like a fire or a flood, then, you grab that box and get out of there.
Speaker:No one's gonna remember to do that, but it's gonna, in the midst
Speaker:of saving their life, no one's gonna go, Hey, make sure you grab the video backup.
Speaker:But that's the best I
Speaker:can do.
Speaker:at least something.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:yeah.
Speaker:I think that's the best possible thing, because otherwise it's better
Speaker:than not having anything at all,
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Never let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Speaker:Good, better, best.
Speaker:Do what you can until you discover something better.
Speaker:If there is a way the the thing like with ring, for example.
Speaker:Ring has figured out how to minimize the footage, how to minimize the
Speaker:footage that matters, you could do that somewhat with security systems.
Speaker:You can turn on,
Speaker:motion detection.
Speaker:yeah, motion detection.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:You could turn on motion detection to minimize the number of hours of video you
Speaker:are creating, and maybe the system can use a codec to reduce the size of the file
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:and, Then maybe it's possible you can put some kind of backup system on there, like
Speaker:a, something that I would think of as a backup system to get that data offsite.
Speaker:That's a lot of maybes in there,
Speaker:but just realize that what you're looking for is one of the most
Speaker:challenging things in it right now.
Speaker:A really important data intensive.
Speaker:Iot device that can create a ton of data that is only stored in
Speaker:one place and they don't send it anywhere because it's just too big.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:, I got an example for the second one.
Speaker:My meter, my electric meter.
Speaker:So my electric meter stores my electric usage for the entire month.
Speaker:And then once a month, they wirelessly go by and they pull the data in, right?
Speaker:Oh, yours isn't always connected.
Speaker:no, not like yours.
Speaker:Yours
Speaker:are, you have, like, you have, uh, what you call it.
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But they recently, uh, the same with my water meter, right?
Speaker:The water meter.
Speaker:They went around and they replaced.
Speaker:The water meter with a smart one that has on the top, they have
Speaker:a, little round metal thing.
Speaker:I don't know
Speaker:what to call it.
Speaker:right?
Speaker:then they drive down the street and it gives them all the, all
Speaker:the data from all the makers.
Speaker:That's a, that's another example.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:but yeah, so I guess the general advice here is to just think about
Speaker:all of the iot devices that you have.
Speaker:a good way to do that is to use your, your,
Speaker:your network.
Speaker:look at your network
Speaker:right?
Speaker:And, look at all the DHCP addresses being given out to random devices that, and then
Speaker:You have no idea what they are.
Speaker:in the case of mine, what's super annoying is when you have an iot device
Speaker:that doesn't give its name like it, it just says it gives you its Mac address
Speaker:and you're like, that's not a name.
Speaker:it is a
Speaker:name, but
Speaker:it's not
Speaker:a
Speaker:not what you're looking for.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I've been going through a lot that lot lately,
Speaker:as you know.
Speaker:So, oh,
Speaker:one thing I wanted to add that I don't think we covered, but is also important
Speaker:is, I know we talked about video, right?
Speaker:, but there are also use cases where you're streaming data.
Speaker:For instance, like my thermostat, right?
Speaker:It's probably sending, Hey, here's the temperature, here's what I turned on, and
Speaker:sending all this data at probably, let's just assume it's say every minute, right?
Speaker:Now as a vendor, right?
Speaker:You may not need to care about keeping all that data, all the
Speaker:raw data for every minute, right?
Speaker:You might aggregate the data up and say, okay, instead of every minute data, I'm
Speaker:gonna aggregate it to every 15 minutes.
Speaker:That aggregated data, though, you still need to protect that data
Speaker:because that's like what consumers like myself see, but you may not need to
Speaker:necessarily keep the raw data forever.
Speaker:And back that up.
Speaker:So that's another important distinction as well, is understand how that data is
Speaker:going to be used, what's coming back from the IOT devices, what you need to keep
Speaker:and how long you need to keep it for.
Speaker:if I could summarize what, what I'm hearing you say there is.
Speaker:Look at what you're going to do with the data that you get, and then consider your
Speaker:data management practices based on that.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:So the, the, I, I think, uh, a correlation or a, or a, a similar device
Speaker:to what you're talking about is sensor data and manufacturing facilities.
Speaker:They've got
Speaker:all these sensors and this is, this is kind of like the, some of those sensors
Speaker:are directly driving what's happening.
Speaker:Some of those sensors are used later in investigations, and so just realize what
Speaker:that data is being used for and then, store it and protect it accordingly.
Speaker:and I'm just saying just have this discussion.
Speaker:Just, just think about all the IOT devices that you have and, sometimes
Speaker:we spend a little bit too much time just talking about servers, just
Speaker:talking about SaaS devices or SaaS services and, we don't spend enough
Speaker:time talking about the millions of iot devices that are out there.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:And with that, thanks for having the
Speaker:chat again.
Speaker:Prasanna
Speaker:Anytime.
Speaker:Thank you, Curtis, and looking forward to our walk in the morning.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:I'd like to thank the listeners for listening to us.
Speaker:We'd be nothing without you.
Speaker:And remember, this is an independent podcast.
Speaker:The opinions that you hear are ours and not necessarily an employer.
Speaker:That's a wrap.