Sometimes those of us in technology think that the solution to every
Speaker:problem is a new piece of gear or a great piece of software.
Speaker:I've been guilty of this a lot lately when I've been thinking about
Speaker:how to prevent data exfiltration.
Speaker:If we could just get the right AI tool in there, we could spot it as
Speaker:it's happening and shut it down.
Speaker:This week's guest is a cyber expert who reminded me that I T has three sides.
Speaker:He thinks the focus should be on process.
Speaker:Then people then technology.
Speaker:Hi, I'm w Curtis press an AKA Mr.
Speaker:Backup.
Speaker:I've been specializing in backup and Dr for over 30 years.
Speaker:And I've written four O'Reilly books on the topic like me.
Speaker:This podcast is dedicated to those of you who are tasked with
Speaker:the difficult job of backup Dr.
Speaker:And data protection.
Speaker:This is backup, centrals, restore it all.
Speaker:W. Curtis Preston: Hi, and welcome to Backup Central's Restore It All podcast.
Speaker:I'm your host, W.
Speaker:Curtis Preston, aka Mr.
Speaker:Backup, and today I have with me a guy who gave me some really good advice.
Speaker:It was really good advice up until it wasn't.
Speaker:Prasanna Malaiyandi How's it going, Prasanna
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I'm good, Curtis.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I'm curious what this good advice is that was good at the time
Prasanna Malaiyandi:W. Curtis Preston: this silver bullet that you gave me called the FCC complaint
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah, I'm surprised not a lot of people know about this.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:if you have an issue with your cell phone provider or your cable company, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Or internet provider.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:you call them in, you complain to them, they give you the runaround,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:and then you spend weeks and weeks, and nothing ever happens.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:W. Curtis Preston: and you're not anywhere.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:exactly.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And then you have this magic thing called the FCC, where you can actually file
Prasanna Malaiyandi:a complaint, and say, hey, my billing is off, or my service isn't right, and
Prasanna Malaiyandi:the provider literally has to respond to you within, I think it's 72 hours.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:W. Curtis Preston: I had never heard of such a thing.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And, and being a person who...
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Having, worked for the government at a point, I definitely understand
Prasanna Malaiyandi:the inefficiency of government.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So the idea that something could be so efficient was definitely.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:a surprise.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:the last time I did this ironically enough, now, as this story comes full
Prasanna Malaiyandi:circle, I was having problems with Cox as my internet, service provider.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I put in an FCC complaint.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And in the end, we did figure out the problem.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And then I changed to Verizon 5G internet.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And everything was fine until it wasn't.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And then I decided to use this magic bullet again.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I got the call within 72 hours.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:During the time that they were working on it, it went from being an intermittent
Prasanna Malaiyandi:problem to being all the time.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:The official response from Verizon is I will obviously be, Paraphrasing
Prasanna Malaiyandi:slightly., yeah, you're right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:We suck.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You should probably get a different ISP.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:By the way, I'm not just complaining about like low speeds.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:My internet would just drop.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Sometimes in the middle of recording one of these episodes, my internet would just
Prasanna Malaiyandi:but basically they said the reason your internet is just dropping, it's congestion
Prasanna Malaiyandi:and you should probably get another ISP.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:That was their official response.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I was.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:dumbfounded, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So again, story come full circle, Cox will be back, in six days, they
Prasanna Malaiyandi:will be installing the fiber version, because I don't have a lot of choices.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Our guest today is the host of the cyber pros podcast, a short form
Prasanna Malaiyandi:podcast, which by the way, it makes it very different from this podcast.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:A short form podcast that has five questions and nine minutes.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:He's our second former special forces member and we're excited
Prasanna Malaiyandi:to have him on the podcast.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Welcome to the show, Rick Mischka.
Rick Mischka:Hello, gents.
Rick Mischka:W. Curtis Preston: So what do you cover in nine minutes on that podcast
Rick Mischka:Yeah, you know, in 2020 I got bored and I wanted to build a
Rick Mischka:cybersecurity network and I want to do it fast and So we had the idea
Rick Mischka:of doing a short form kind of video podcast that that would be be quick.
Rick Mischka:We actually thought six minutes could fit in in six questions could fit in nine
Rick Mischka:minutes, but we were way wrong on that.
Rick Mischka:So, so we pivoted down to five.
Rick Mischka:And, and honestly, the first and last question are more, you know, who are you?
Rick Mischka:What do you do?
Rick Mischka:And then.
Rick Mischka:You know, tell us a fun story or typically we ask, you know, what's your
Rick Mischka:favorite piece of retro technology?
Rick Mischka:The three middle questions are really the ones that we get kind
Rick Mischka:of the, the meat of conversation.
Rick Mischka:And it's, it's, you know, why do you love being a cybersecurity professional?
Rick Mischka:Why do you think cybersecurity should, or is, or isn't a top concern?
Rick Mischka:And then just what insights do you want to share?
Rick Mischka:Whatever they share with us in those five questions, we then
Rick Mischka:actually do something interesting.
Rick Mischka:We, we.
Rick Mischka:We record bonus content afterwards, and we focus that bonus content
Rick Mischka:on one, education, two, a little bit of marketing, and then three,
Rick Mischka:we focus on knowledge, right?
Rick Mischka:Just, just what knowledge do they want to share even more of?
Rick Mischka:And we typically do that in 30 seconds to three minutes.
Rick Mischka:And so now...
Rick Mischka:Our podcast guests get a full week of exposure.
Rick Mischka:They get the full podcast release.
Rick Mischka:They get a bunch of bonus contests released around it.
Rick Mischka:We're able to bring in a lot of people through a number of different doors.
Rick Mischka:And man, it's, it's just been a lot of fun.
Rick Mischka:I've been able to connect a lot of people to, to really
Rick Mischka:just kind of grow the network.
Rick Mischka:You know, a couple of the podcast guests got together and wrote a book.
Rick Mischka:A couple of the podcast guests got together and started a company.
Rick Mischka:So.
Rick Mischka:Awesome, right?
Rick Mischka:So been fun.
Rick Mischka:Yeah.
Rick Mischka:W. Curtis Preston: I like it I'd like to hear the five questions
Rick Mischka:So they're the same five questions for everybody
Rick Mischka:typically, unless we get somebody who's a specialist
Rick Mischka:in something, so it's who are you and what do you do, right?
Rick Mischka:That's We'll call that one question.
Rick Mischka:And then why do you love being a cybersecurity professional?
Rick Mischka:That question will change if they're a professional in cloud, if data backup, you
Rick Mischka:know, so if you were on, we would ask you that question a little bit differently.
Rick Mischka:And then the third question we ask, you know, cybersecurity is a top concern.
Rick Mischka:Do you believe that's true?
Rick Mischka:And in, in the industry you're in, how does that, how does that interact?
Rick Mischka:And then the fourth question is just.
Rick Mischka:What insight do you want to share?
Rick Mischka:Here's your, you know, if you've done your job, you have five minutes to talk
Rick Mischka:and, and about anything you want to talk
Rick Mischka:and then.
Rick Mischka:If you're a first time guest, we always ask if, what's your favorite
Rick Mischka:piece of retro technology is.
Rick Mischka:Usually I get some, you know, usually I get all sorts of things.
Rick Mischka:Usually it's, you know, Apple computers, Commodores, things like that.
Rick Mischka:I had somebody come back and say the, the semi automatic pistol.
Rick Mischka:And I was like, that's technology.
Rick Mischka:So here we go.
Rick Mischka:We're going down to completely different conversation.
Rick Mischka:And I have to laugh.
Rick Mischka:I actually useless trivia.
Rick Mischka:I actually just bought one of my favorite pieces of retro
Rick Mischka:technology in its new form.
Rick Mischka:The Motorola Razr.
Rick Mischka:So I have newest, the newest flip phone version, and it's so cool
Rick Mischka:because you can actually set it to, show you as if you were using
Rick Mischka:the original Motorola Razr, it's
Prasanna Malaiyandi:that is awesome.
Rick Mischka:Yeah,
Rick Mischka:W. Curtis Preston: I
Rick Mischka:had the original Motorola Razr
Rick Mischka:as did I.
Rick Mischka:And so it's fun.
Rick Mischka:I get to be the butt of my own question.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:What is probably one of the most interesting
Prasanna Malaiyandi:insights from cybersecurity answers that you've received?
Rick Mischka:Yeah.
Rick Mischka:You know, actually I'll start with the one I get the most of.
Rick Mischka:The most insights I get are the idea that cybersecurity has
Rick Mischka:to focus on the people, right?
Rick Mischka:Dozens of different ways that conversation plays out, but that's the most talked
Rick Mischka:about is, is the people, cybersecurity, burnout, talent acquisition, security
Rick Mischka:gap, whatever that looks like, and it's, it's quite interesting, but the
Rick Mischka:most interesting one that I've ever had was actually the use of artificial
Rick Mischka:intelligence and machine learning as it pertains to cybersecurity.
Rick Mischka:And biometrics and the insights that they shared were fascinating because their
Rick Mischka:company had just gotten acquired, was, was putting a bunch of venture capital dollars
Rick Mischka:into this solution that were actually selling some of the, the solution to.
Rick Mischka:Tesla, the way you walk up to your car will unlock the car for you
Rick Mischka:because it knows your gate, along with facial rec and other biometrics.
Rick Mischka:And it's fascinating.
Rick Mischka:It was, it was mind blowing what can do.
Rick Mischka:So
Prasanna Malaiyandi:it's interesting you bring that up, Rick.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So recently my wife and I, we binge watched all the Mission Impossible movies.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And there's, I don't know if you remember, but there's a one Mission Impossible
Prasanna Malaiyandi:where it's like, they have to imitate to be the guy and walk through a secure
Prasanna Malaiyandi:area where it does a gait analysis.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And I was just thinking, I was like, wow, technology it's come.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's like real now.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:or the other day I was watching Minority Report.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's like all this stuff they're doing.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's that's now become like reality.
Rick Mischka:You should add the Mission Impossible theme to the start of, of this
Rick Mischka:podcast
Rick Mischka:W. Curtis Preston: Yeah I just rewatched that one again to Prasanna and of course
Rick Mischka:that technology was defeated by uploading a different gate analysis The first time
Rick Mischka:I saw a computer used to do something that that literally I went wow actually
Rick Mischka:okay The very first thing I remember seeing a computer do something that made
Rick Mischka:me do wow was when I was in my teens you could go to a police station in Kissimmee
Rick Mischka:Florida That's where I was from And you could give them an address and they
Rick Mischka:could print out turn by turn directions of how to get to there And I remember
Rick Mischka:going That's the most amazing I've ever seen but the second thing was I was a
Rick Mischka:consultant at a communications company that was using simulation modeling in
Rick Mischka:a computer to test their device like to harden their device by like in a
Rick Mischka:computer hitting it with a softball in a computer dropping that device on the
Rick Mischka:ground Do you know what that device was
Rick Mischka:The Nokia phone from back in the day?
Rick Mischka:W. Curtis Preston: It was the Motorola Razr my friend
Rick Mischka:Fair, there's the full circle.
Rick Mischka:W. Curtis Preston: Yeah Yeah I was working at Motorola in Schaumburg Illinois
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Crazy.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:W. Curtis Preston: yeah it was amazing to me what they do One of the things I'm
Prasanna Malaiyandi:very concerned about is data exfiltration cause as a backup and recovery person
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I can stop a lot of things I can stop a pure ransomware attack by just restoring
Prasanna Malaiyandi:the data but what I can't stop if the data is exfiltrated there's nothing I
Prasanna Malaiyandi:can do So the question is so I think that AI and ML are the next thing for
Prasanna Malaiyandi:basically doing the equivalent of gate analysis on the outgoing traffic for a
Prasanna Malaiyandi:typical company and then noticing when something is very different and calling
Prasanna Malaiyandi:it out and stopping it automatically So far I'm not hearing A lot of
Prasanna Malaiyandi:agreement on that when I talk to folks
Prasanna Malaiyandi:are you talking mainly Curtis about
Prasanna Malaiyandi:anomaly detection based on
Prasanna Malaiyandi:W. Curtis Preston: Yes
Prasanna Malaiyandi:looking for data exfiltration?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Okay.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:W. Curtis Preston: Yes
Rick Mischka:Yeah, I mean, I will say, I think people got a little out over their
Rick Mischka:skis looking at, you know, unsupervised machine learning and trying to train
Rick Mischka:it to baseline and then anomaly detect.
Rick Mischka:And you end up with either a lot of false positives or you end up with...
Rick Mischka:Just a lot of data that the machine learning model is still working on.
Rick Mischka:And I think the world is seeing kind of, I don't want to call it a
Rick Mischka:reversion, but an add in to a lot of that unsupervised machine learning
Rick Mischka:with supervised machine learning.
Rick Mischka:That's trained on data models of both benign and malicious data
Rick Mischka:that allows those supervised models to say, okay, here's the 14 or 40
Rick Mischka:or whatever number you want of.
Rick Mischka:Threat vectors that we know, right?
Rick Mischka:EXE files, documents, things like that.
Rick Mischka:When you have as much data as we have now, you can train these supervised
Rick Mischka:machine learning models to say, Oh, 98, 99 percent of the time we can catch
Rick Mischka:something and we don't need anomaly.
Rick Mischka:And so I think that was the miss for, for me, that's what I'm seeing is people
Rick Mischka:jump right to unsupervised thinking that anomaly detection was the only way.
Rick Mischka:And we went from signature known crap to let's figure out what the user is doing
Rick Mischka:and hope their behavior doesn't change.
Rick Mischka:And they missed the step.
Rick Mischka:And I think, you know, good companies, EDR endpoint detection response
Rick Mischka:vendors, a lot of the new managed detection response solutions that
Rick Mischka:are bringing in XDR solutions.
Rick Mischka:have realized that and they can make that model better by adding
Rick Mischka:in a supervised model as well.
Rick Mischka:I, I think that's the path we need to get to, to actually
Rick Mischka:see it be extremely useful, but
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I think one of the challenges also with anomaly detection
Prasanna Malaiyandi:is, especially with these unsupervised models, you get so many sort of false
Prasanna Malaiyandi:positives, where it's hey, the user just did something different, but it's normal.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And the model has never seen it before.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And of course, it's going to flag something.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And as a, as a security engineer trying to go through those logs and figure
Prasanna Malaiyandi:out, okay, what's a real threat, what is a false positive, that kills so much
Prasanna Malaiyandi:of your time that what I've heard is a lot of people are like, screw it, it's
Prasanna Malaiyandi:not worth it, let me just turn it off.
Rick Mischka:It's true.
Rick Mischka:And, and, and, you know, I think the other thing that, that people forgot was
Rick Mischka:They jumped towards the technology and they forgot that there's a whole lot of
Rick Mischka:process and people that need to be in place for the, for the technology to work.
Rick Mischka:you know, I know everybody knows the PBT framework.
Rick Mischka:It's, it's used in almost every technology model ever.
Rick Mischka:it was actually created in the sixties by a guy by the name of
Rick Mischka:Harold Levitt as the diamond model.
Rick Mischka:There was four points to it, but when we do.
Rick Mischka:An analysis of somebody's cybersecurity posture doesn't matter what machine
Rick Mischka:learning models doesn't matter what technology they have for us.
Rick Mischka:The technology is only about 10 percent of the solution that we
Rick Mischka:present that they should be looking at.
Rick Mischka:And we talk about, okay.
Rick Mischka:30 percent is, is, is the people.
Rick Mischka:Can you provide those?
Rick Mischka:Do you need people to be outsourced or managed from, you
Rick Mischka:know, managed service provider?
Rick Mischka:And then 60 percent of it is, here's your process.
Rick Mischka:If you have a good process, the technology will work, but most people
Rick Mischka:just, like you said, turn it on.
Rick Mischka:All of a sudden they have triple the, the, the alerts and they
Rick Mischka:don't know how to handle it.
Rick Mischka:W. Curtis Preston: Yeah it's interesting I think that was a good point about that
Rick Mischka:people think that technology is just going to solve the problem when in reality Even
Rick Mischka:if the it was able to detect an anomaly there's still a human being That is going
Rick Mischka:to have to read that information view that information and respond to that
Rick Mischka:information because you're not at least I wouldn't think the average person is
Rick Mischka:not going to automatically start shutting off outgoing communications based on an
Rick Mischka:anomaly especially if there's so many false positives So there's got to be
Rick Mischka:that person involved Rick I'd like to ask you about that 30 60 percent that's
Rick Mischka:it's interesting that you put so much focus on the process like it felt I don't
Rick Mischka:know if anything I if I was guessing I'd be like 50 50 between the people
Rick Mischka:and the process thoughts about that
Rick Mischka:you know, I think, I think we all agree that the technology
Rick Mischka:is, is just a component, right?
Rick Mischka:It's, it's supposed to make us better, faster, easier,
Rick Mischka:whatever they want to look at.
Rick Mischka:And some would argue that the people side of the house should be, you know, higher
Rick Mischka:rated, higher percentage of what you do.
Rick Mischka:In today's world where we automate a lot of things, you can remove a human
Rick Mischka:for, you know, X number of automations that you do, but I'm going to take it
Rick Mischka:even further as to why we place such an emphasis on the process side, and
Rick Mischka:that's everything a company focuses on their business objectives, their
Rick Mischka:continuity, their resilience, right?
Rick Mischka:None of those are cyber security based, but all of those have to have
Rick Mischka:a process in place for people to know.
Rick Mischka:Hey, that's what my job is.
Rick Mischka:That's what I'm supposed to be doing to progress this company,
Rick Mischka:to make more revenue, to drive bottom bottom line goals.
Rick Mischka:And so.
Rick Mischka:If you can create great process, you create great culture and you don't
Rick Mischka:need as many humans because the humans you have are able to just do more.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You're being more efficient with what you have rather
Prasanna Malaiyandi:than trying to add a whole bunch of more people to make up for the lack of process
Rick Mischka:said it so much better in 12 seconds.
Rick Mischka:W. Curtis Preston: You should have them on your nine minute podcast Sure
Rick Mischka:Perfect.
Rick Mischka:W. Curtis Preston: Rick based on all the people that you've talked to what
Rick Mischka:do you think are one of the things that we like to ask people is if you were if
Rick Mischka:you had carte blanche at an environment What are the the top five things that you
Rick Mischka:think people maybe aren't doing that they should be doing right So we can throw
Rick Mischka:out the for me the three obvious ones right Good password management MFA And
Rick Mischka:patch management right So assuming that we're doing those three things what else
Rick Mischka:do you think companies should be doing
Rick Mischka:For me, the first one I always tell companies is, is create
Rick Mischka:an incident response plan that allows you to grow cybersecurity culture.
Rick Mischka:But that cybersecurity isn't thing that's controlling your business.
Rick Mischka:I think too many times they're like, well, I'm, I'm beholden to this regulation
Rick Mischka:or I have this type of data that I have to secure and they, they stop doing
Rick Mischka:good business to do good cybersecurity.
Rick Mischka:And I think you you can flip that around.
Rick Mischka:Quite a bit.
Rick Mischka:And I think, you know, that that's one of the top ones for me.
Rick Mischka:The second one, it really focuses on the human side, the people side.
Rick Mischka:everyone makes the joke, we need cybersecurity
Rick Mischka:professionals and we want to.
Rick Mischka:You know, we want somebody who's new to the business, but we need them to have a
Rick Mischka:CISSP and 14 years of experience, right?
Rick Mischka:So, entry level position and, and I just, whenever I talk to, you know,
Rick Mischka:small to mid sized businesses or mid market folks, I explain to them, go find
Rick Mischka:somebody who's hungry to do the job.
Rick Mischka:And train them how you want the job done or, or, or paid for their training to
Rick Mischka:get the job to where they need to be.
Rick Mischka:And you don't need somebody who has a CISSP.
Rick Mischka:You don't even need somebody who has a degree.
Rick Mischka:If you have somebody who's hungry, who's done the certification bootcamps, they're
Rick Mischka:willing to step in and learn, likely stay with you longer for those reasons.
Rick Mischka:And I think, you know, even the big enterprise companies are starting
Rick Mischka:to finally have this moment.
Rick Mischka:If I go get the college grad.
Rick Mischka:And I trained him and get him a bunch of certifications in that first year.
Rick Mischka:He or she is going to stay far longer.
Rick Mischka:The third thing I would say is you need to understand your
Rick Mischka:cybersecurity edges, right?
Rick Mischka:Are you a fully cloud edge?
Rick Mischka:And do you know what that means, right?
Rick Mischka:You're using AWS or Azure, but you're also using software as a service applications.
Rick Mischka:Do you understand the differences?
Rick Mischka:Do you understand that there's an endpoint edge?
Rick Mischka:Every user is on an endpoint, so how can you protect your users from
Rick Mischka:themselves by finding a solution that matches your needs on those endpoints?
Rick Mischka:And then your network.
Rick Mischka:Some people don't have a network, and that's okay, right?
Rick Mischka:They've gone straight, you know, VPN to the internet, call it good.
Rick Mischka:But understand what those three are, understand how you, how you can cover
Rick Mischka:those, and that will lead you down a really good cybersecurity journey.
Rick Mischka:And lastly, Here's my brown nose moment for you guys.
Rick Mischka:I recommend that everybody understands what actual data backup needs to mean to
Rick Mischka:them
Rick Mischka:So if they have an incident, they can recover and not rely on their insurance
Rick Mischka:company to provide them with investigators and forensics and responders, and
Rick Mischka:then not pay them anyways, so.
Rick Mischka:Those are my four.
Rick Mischka:Those are the four I tend to talk about the most.
Rick Mischka:W. Curtis Preston: Go
Rick Mischka:That my
Rick Mischka:that's
Rick Mischka:my world cup moment there what do you
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Oh I like those four ideas or things that people should be
Prasanna Malaiyandi:considering Rick for the first one when you're talking about the incident response
Prasanna Malaiyandi:do you find that a lot of companies are woefully prepared they're ostrich with
Prasanna Malaiyandi:head buried in the sand It's not going to happen to me I don't need to worry
Prasanna Malaiyandi:about this sort of thing Or do you think that's started to change given all the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:recent activity around ransomware and data exfiltration and other things like that
Rick Mischka:I think it's changing.
Rick Mischka:I don't think, I don't think we're anywhere near where it needs to be.
Rick Mischka:I believe people are starting to have those moments where, well,
Rick Mischka:do I have a continuity plan?
Rick Mischka:Right?
Rick Mischka:A lot of companies I talked to, they're like, well, we have, we
Rick Mischka:have a disaster recovery plan.
Rick Mischka:And I'm like, okay, that's great.
Rick Mischka:Right?
Rick Mischka:If, if a hurricane hits you, you know how to fix the problem.
Rick Mischka:But An incident response plan can encompass your business continuity, your
Rick Mischka:disaster recovery, and all of your, your security systems planning in one document.
Rick Mischka:And if it's done correctly, I think what most people say
Rick Mischka:is, well, we have the plan.
Rick Mischka:Have you tested it?
Rick Mischka:Have you played the tabletop?
Rick Mischka:All right, let's nerd out.
Rick Mischka:And, and even though you might have never played Dungeons and Dragons, let's go play
Rick Mischka:the tabletop game with, you know, whatever you want to play, get your entire group
Rick Mischka:in, and let's see what it looks like.
Rick Mischka:Usually the point that it fails on is not on the catching of it,
Rick Mischka:not on the data backing up, right?
Rick Mischka:Not on, on recovery.
Rick Mischka:It's, it's on, Communication.
Rick Mischka:don't follow or have a good communication path, which leads to their cyber
Rick Mischka:insurance company telling them, Oh, you didn't meet our requirements.
Rick Mischka:We're not paying you for what you had to do to go recover.
Rick Mischka:And they also forget about the legal aspect.
Rick Mischka:You know, they're, they think, Oh, I need an attorney after the
Rick Mischka:fact to help me understand what my Requirements are to my customers.
Rick Mischka:If I've given up my customer data or my employees, if I've given
Rick Mischka:up their data, they don't realize
Rick Mischka:what was that
Prasanna Malaiyandi:That's too late though right
Rick Mischka:it's too late.
Rick Mischka:And, and what they don't realize is you can actually protect.
Rick Mischka:and get under that, that, that lawyer umbrella, that cone of
Rick Mischka:silence, you know, as it were, you can get on that early as you're
Rick Mischka:creating the incident response plan.
Rick Mischka:You can have somebody that looks at that plan and says, okay, you now have a,
Rick Mischka:you know, an attorney client privilege.
Rick Mischka:You don't have to share some of this information with your insurance company.
Rick Mischka:You don't have to share this with the general public and here's why.
Rick Mischka:And so moving the legal and the communication stuff up earlier
Rick Mischka:in the plan and really hammering it home, the rest of the plan is.
Rick Mischka:process and technology, right?
Rick Mischka:Let's be real.
Rick Mischka:It's, Oh, we found the problem.
Rick Mischka:We fixed the problem.
Rick Mischka:So, you know, those are, I think that's the interesting part that people are
Rick Mischka:starting to finally get this, Hey, wait, there are, there are attorneys,
Rick Mischka:there are insurance companies out there who are just, you know, available,
Rick Mischka:but not available at the end.
Rick Mischka:Let's, let's see how we can move this forward.
Rick Mischka:W. Curtis Preston: Yeah that would be my I've been pretty consistent with that as
Rick Mischka:well that basically probably the biggest point of having these discussions up front
Rick Mischka:with creating that incident response plan and doing those tabletop exercises and by
Rick Mischka:the way for the record I never played D D But but I like the idea of a tabletop
Rick Mischka:exercise but I'm just not I'm just not that big of a nerd but I love all the D
Rick Mischka:nerds but they wouldn't let me play anyway sorry I'm a sad childhood That you're even
Rick Mischka:excluded from nerdhood but I digress The thing that we talk about this a lot is
Rick Mischka:this idea of creating those relationships up front Don't have an incident and
Rick Mischka:then Oh we need to find a cyber security firm We need to find a lawyer We need to
Rick Mischka:find whatever you need to create those relationships up front because it's like
Rick Mischka:having a large company in the United States and not having a legal department
Rick Mischka:I don't know how it is in other parts of the world but we live in such a litigious
Rick Mischka:society You're going to be sued for something And so you have to have a lawyer
Rick Mischka:right and of course you have to have a lawyer hopefully so that you have the
Rick Mischka:right paperwork so that you don't get sued But then you have a lawyer in case you
Rick Mischka:do get sued You need a cybersecurity team and you need cybersecurity professionals
Rick Mischka:on your side so that when you get a cyber attack because it is a when not an
Rick Mischka:if You have those people in your corner right Does that match what you're saying
Rick Mischka:Spot on.
Rick Mischka:Yeah.
Rick Mischka:And it goes back to what we talked about, about that 60 percent process.
Rick Mischka:If you have an incident response plan, there's your process.
Rick Mischka:And all you do is go and say, yep, we know this works.
Rick Mischka:Just follow the process.
Rick Mischka:So,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I like that I also wanted to touch just given our area
Prasanna Malaiyandi:that we always like to talk about I'm glad that you talked about backup Rick
Prasanna Malaiyandi:because I feel that a lot of times people forget about it when it comes to sort
Prasanna Malaiyandi:of incident responses Or even like you said try doing like the tabletop exercise
Prasanna Malaiyandi:try out the thing right Even for backup It's like how often do people go verify
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Do their backups work Are they able to recover their data or are they able to
Prasanna Malaiyandi:test out their disaster recovery plans I think that becomes really important as
Prasanna Malaiyandi:part of the process Piece and spelling out Yes periodically you do want to test
Prasanna Malaiyandi:these things to make sure that things are still working because the last
Prasanna Malaiyandi:thing you want is hey you got attacked Now you need to recover Oops I forgot
Prasanna Malaiyandi:to do this or oops I forgot to do that And so now your environment's kind of
Prasanna Malaiyandi:in shambles and you're all scrambling trying to get things back up and running
Rick Mischka:or they just haven't hardened their backups because
Rick Mischka:they haven't checked them in, in, you know, three months and
Rick Mischka:now your backups are just as bad.
Rick Mischka:what just
Rick Mischka:X filled.
Rick Mischka:So hopefully that doesn't happen, but it can.
Rick Mischka:So
Rick Mischka:W. Curtis Preston: Yeah The backups are increasingly both a target in terms of
Rick Mischka:to take them out so that the cyber attack will be more successful and also to use
Rick Mischka:them as a source for data exfiltration I'm trying to raise the awareness of that
Rick Mischka:within the cybersecurity world And so if the cyber folks hear anything from me it
Rick Mischka:should be that somewhere in the corner you talk about that hiring a college
Rick Mischka:kid and then training them right That's there's also normally a college kid
Rick Mischka:Maybe not even a college kid That's the person in the corner doing the backups
Rick Mischka:because it was the only job he could get and he didn't necessarily he's not
Rick Mischka:that person you were when you said when you were talking about find the person
Rick Mischka:who has the desire to do this job that's hungry often with the backup the person
Rick Mischka:was just hungry for a job they weren't hungry necessarily for the site for the
Rick Mischka:Doing the backups No one is no one's in college going man I really hoped that
Rick Mischka:somebody hires me as a backup admin
Rick Mischka:Prasanna Malaiyandi: Except you Mr Backup Except
Rick Mischka:W. Curtis Preston: no not even I know no this is yeah it's how I got my
Rick Mischka:job I wanted to be in computers I did want to be in computers and I took
Rick Mischka:the job as backup person Because that was the job I could get and it got
Rick Mischka:me into the big bank and and then I just Accidentally never got out of it
Rick Mischka:So that's how I ended up specializing
Rick Mischka:in
Prasanna Malaiyandi:as I say.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:W. Curtis Preston: Yeah the rest is history yeah I like
Prasanna Malaiyandi:that I really like this idea, of figuring out where your edges are.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Because back in the day, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:The edges were the edge of the building, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Nobody had computers outside the building.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:All the computers were inside the building.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:We had a data center.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It was the center of the data, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:That was the way that things were, but now your edges are everywhere, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:there, all this work from home that's going on, and the SaaS and the, the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:cloud data centers, the PaaS services.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You're, you are, I wonder if you don't have a handle on that today,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:how does one go about, figuring out where their IT department has scrawled
Prasanna Malaiyandi:to, I can't imagine how you could start doing something like that.
Rick Mischka:know, I've, I've seen an interesting trend
Rick Mischka:of companies who have gone.
Rick Mischka:The way of not having any location, my wife's company actually has done that.
Rick Mischka:They have no buildings that they pay rent for.
Rick Mischka:They provide a stipend for every one of their employees to go find a coworking
Rick Mischka:space, which is, which really cool for them, but now you're on public wifi for
Rick Mischka:the most part, and they don't have any.
Rick Mischka:Firewalls, they have no network security.
Rick Mischka:Everything they, they do is, is, in the cloud, right?
Rick Mischka:Access is through a SaaS application and they made the intelligent
Rick Mischka:decision that they didn't need all of this network security they needed
Rick Mischka:to make sure that their employees were protected on the end points.
Rick Mischka:Right?
Rick Mischka:Typically a laptop provided to them or a mobile device.
Rick Mischka:And then they took it one step further and said, all of our data is in the cloud.
Rick Mischka:They're accessing everything that's somewhere in the cloud.
Rick Mischka:We need a security broker.
Rick Mischka:We need a workload protection solution.
Rick Mischka:And that's how we're covering our edges.
Rick Mischka:But there's still people hanging on to, well, I need all three edges.
Rick Mischka:Do you?
Rick Mischka:I don't, I don't know, but understand why you think you need that.
Rick Mischka:The most important edge today is, is wherever your users are accessing
Rick Mischka:the data, find a way to secure that.
Rick Mischka:And you've secured a majority of, of.
Rick Mischka:Now, that doesn't mean you can't still have your users click on something stupid.
Rick Mischka:you can't train stupidity.
Rick Mischka:So, it's gonna happen.
Rick Mischka:But at least if you have protection where they're clicking on it,
Rick Mischka:hopefully you'll catch it a lot sooner.
Rick Mischka:or worst case...
Rick Mischka:You fall back to your data backups who are far more protected from someone like you
Rick Mischka:or the, or the kid that just wanted a job.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:or, and the other thing is hopefully you can also reduce the blast radius, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And you've got to do both.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You've got to train the users.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And then you've got to.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Prepare to respond when the users don't do what you trained them to do.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I mentioned this a lot on the podcast, but at that bank where I worked, we
Prasanna Malaiyandi:constantly trained new employees that one of the things that we always told
Prasanna Malaiyandi:them over and over again is no one in the IT department will ever call
Prasanna Malaiyandi:you and ask you for your password.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And then the next day after their new employee training, we would call
Prasanna Malaiyandi:them and ask them for their password.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And they would give it to us a sadly high percentage of the time.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And, people will, and sometimes you'll just access sometimes
Prasanna Malaiyandi:you'll, it takes a moment Of just not paying attention, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:A little bit too much muscle memory, clicking on something.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:so even smart people that are trained and normally do the right thing
Prasanna Malaiyandi:can also click on the wrong thing.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I know, I remember doing that once when I thought I was talking to
Prasanna Malaiyandi:LifeLock because my employer at the time had subscribed us all to LifeLock.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:it was a spear phishing attack because, it was like they knew
Prasanna Malaiyandi:that I was using LifeLock.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And so they went right after me, or maybe it was just, I don't know if it was just
Prasanna Malaiyandi:a random phishing attack, but, but I logged into what I thought was my LifeLock
Prasanna Malaiyandi:account and, it very much was not, and I immediately did all the I needed to do.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I also remember the other story, Curtis, you told, just going
Prasanna Malaiyandi:back to muscle memory, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's, I remember you had a story where, You got an MFA request and
Prasanna Malaiyandi:you're like, but I don't remember making that MFA request, remember?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And were like, yeah, but you actually did do that, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And it's I think it can go both ways, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:The muscle
Prasanna Malaiyandi:W. Curtis Preston: yeah, absolutely.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I remember that where I got an MFA request and via muscle memory, I was like, yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Boom.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Boom.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And then I was like, wait.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:what did I just do?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:What did I just approve?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And what it was because I had opened up, Chrome and it had 37 tabs and one
Prasanna Malaiyandi:of those tabs was authentication via that, the system that was doing an MFA.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So I breathe the sigh of relief.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I appreciate those four things.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:see Rick, we probably could have done this podcast in nine minutes,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:and done just those four things.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:we should all be like you.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I appreciate brevity where I find it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:but no one ever finds it on this podcast.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:so thanks.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Thanks a lot, Rick, for coming on and talking about, one
Prasanna Malaiyandi:of our favorite subjects.
Rick Mischka:thank you guys for having me.
Rick Mischka:This was so much fun.
Rick Mischka:W. Curtis Preston: And, thanks Prasanna for reminding me of that sad
Rick Mischka:moment in, in my personal history.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Anytime, Curtis.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I always try to bring you down.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And Rick, it was as well
Prasanna Malaiyandi:W. Curtis Preston: All right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Thanks again to our listeners.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:we'd be nothing without you.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Be sure to subscribe on, wherever you listen to the podcast so
Prasanna Malaiyandi:that you can restore it all.