Speaker:

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.