Up Times · February 2022

Up Times

by Bryley · May 2022

aaghhhh!

P.U.D.R. – Some of the Worst Backup Practices

Bryley’s Seen Some Bad Backup & Disaster Recovery Practices

You are backing up, right? File corruption, drive failure, natural disasters, employee errors, employee anger, theft, ransomware …

But are you backing up right? Because, as an example, “organizations that paid [the criminals] got back only sixty-one percent of their data … only four percent of those that paid the ransom got all their data back.” So be sure you’re doing things well to realize a successful recovery from your backup.

Over the course of Bryley’s years our engineers and techs have witnessed some bad set-ups when it comes to backing up. Here are some examples and tips about how to do it better … [5 min. read]

2022 and 2008 covers mirror one another

Mounting a Defense Against Ransomware

The Latest Report

The jaw-dropper from the recently released annual Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report is the thirteen percent rise in the incidence of ransomware. This represents a single-year increase equal to the increases of the past five years combined … [4 min. read]


Business Continuity Mixtape – Bryley-curated stories from around the internet:

Game OverAccording to new research by ESG that studied 620 businesses, backup is the key ransomware recovery strategy, in that it allows businesses to refuse having to negotiate with the criminals. The report shows that seventy-nine percent in the study experienced a ransomware attack last year and just under ninety percent still have mission-critical data that’s unprotected from cyberattacks … [4 min. read] redmondmag.com

zero trust

Zero trust is the networking architecture that assumes criminals have already compromised the network and so continually performs risk analyses, allowing or denying access to each resource while it executes the broader network purposes.

Last year zero trust for the US defense supply chain was signed into law by Pres. Biden’s executive order; suppliers must comply by the end of FY 2024.

A recent study by defense contractor General Dynamics Information Technology measured the progress federal agencies have made on their zero trust implementation. Nearly forty percent say they are behind schedule. Fifty-eight percent said they are being challenged by legacy infrastructure. Watch this space … these implementations filter down from military applications to other compliancies and supply chains, i.e. zero trust is coming to a network near you … [5 min. read] securitymagazine.com

magnifying 5G

Those yummy mmWaves that provide on-the-level 5G service remain hard to find. A survey on the state of 5G shows just how much coverage and how much fudging of the numbers is taking place. mmWaves are truly high-speed and easily obstructed — that’s why they’re demonstrated in conference centers and stadiums. The much more common Sub-6 is only marginally faster than 4G LTE … [4 min. read] digitaltrends.com

Bluetooth Key

Well, isn’t that convenient? “Hacking into a car from hundreds of miles away tangibly demonstrates how our connected world opens us up to threats from … even the other side of the world,” Sultan Qasim Khan a researcher at NCC Group said. This research, he said, “changes the way we need to think about the security of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) communications.” He shows this technique by driving off with a Tesla. But Khan says as reported by ArsTechnica “virtually any BLE device that authenticates solely on proximity—as opposed to also requiring user interaction, geolocation querying, or something else—is vulnerable …” [8 min. read] arstechnica.com

Data Explosion

A Facebook ads team internal engineering document has leaked. In the memo, the team admits it has no idea where all the data is going and calls for a change in how Facebook deals with users’ data so the company doesn’t get into trouble with governments pushing for better information protection.

We do not have an adequate level of control and explainability over how our systems use data, and thus we can’t confidently make controlled policy changes or external commitments such as ‘we will not use X data for Y purpose.’”

The volume of data companies collect continues to grow exponentially and in this largest of examples, users’ info is not being responsibly managed … [8 min. read] vice.com

Artificial Intelligence gets us pretty close to simulating craftsmanship, but once upon a time there was the BMW E39 M5. Car and Driver editor Eddie Alterman’s podcast Car Show compares the latest tech and the twenty-year-old Ultimate Driving Machine. It’s a look at the high-speed evolution of computing technology and the inevitable trade-offs we’ve made going down that particular road … [1 hour listen] pushkin.fm

Note: The Mixtape section is Bryley’s curated list of external stories. Bryley does not take credit for the content of these stories, nor does it endorse or imply an affiliation with the authors or publications in which they appear.

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