The Backup Wrap-Up

Jaksot

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  Least Privilege Best Practices: Where to Start 14.09.2026 39min

  Least privilege best practices start with one uncomfortable question: does this person actually need this access? A hospital in Portugal answered yes for everybody, gave every employee doctor-level access to patient records, and got hit with a 400,000 euro GDPR fine. The court's read was that they hadn't even attempted the concept.Mike Saylor, Prasanna, and I get into what least privilege really means, then move straight to the part nobody wants to talk about: where you start when everybody already has domain admin. Mike lays out three approaches, from "turn everything off and see who screams" to a real analysis of job roles. We talk about why role-based administration is the vehicle that gets you there, and why role sprawl will eat you alive if you build a custom role for every human in the building.From there we get into segregation of duties, which accounting figured out decades before IT did. Your admin account should not be the account you use to check Gmail. That leads into non-repudiation, su versus sudo, and why logs have to leave the box and land in a SIEM before somebody edits them.The last third is action items. Inventory your privileged accounts, your service accounts, your support accounts, and the fire call accounts you break glass for. Track more than the name and the privilege level: who owns it, why it exists, when the password changed, when it expires. And if you run backups, split your roles apart. Editing backup configs, running backups, and doing restores should not be the same permission. Somebody quietly shortening retention is invisible to the person watching last night's job reports. A restore never trips an alarm at all.If your admins fight you on any of this, Mike has a thought about that too.00:00 The hospital where the janitor could read your chart04:26 The 400,000 euro fine, and the failed appeal07:50 What least privilege actually means08:54 Three ways to start when everyone has too much11:17 Access that follows people as jobs change12:57 Role-based administration is the vehicle16:13 Role sprawl and the 80/20 rule18:26 Segregation of duties, borrowed from accounting20:28 Back when everybody had root: su and sudo21:59 Non-repudiation and getting logs into a SIEM25:31 Inventory privileged, service, and fire call accounts27:41 The three backup roles you should separate32:39 What your account inventory should track35:31 Expiring accounts nobody uses36:42 When admins push back, be concerned
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  Password Length vs Complexity: Why Longer Always Wins 07.09.2026 33min

  Password length vs complexity isn't a close call. Dr. Mike Saylor joins Curtis and Prasanna to explain why the capital letter, the number, and the special character your bank demands do less for you than simply adding characters.Mike walks through the rainbow table project — an operation that has spent years computing password hashes nonstop and will sell you 20 terabytes of the results. Nobody cracks your password. They look it up. The catch, and the whole reason this episode matters, is that the project has only reached ten characters after all that work.The three also cover why some LastPass customers had their vaults drained and others didn't, where the 16-character recommendation comes from, how to build a passphrase you'll remember, whether forced password rotation accomplishes anything, and what happened when Mike rolled out fingerprint-locked laptops to fifty field employees.Get the book: Learning Ransomware Response and Recovery at stopransomware.com
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  RDP Security Best Practices Every Admin Ignores Until It's Too Late 31.08.2026 33min

  RDP security best practices come down to one rule most admins break on day one: that protocol has no business facing the internet. Dr. Mike Saylor and Prasanna Malaiyandi join me to break down why RDP earned the nickname Ransomware Deployment Protocol, who's out there scanning for your open port right now, and what to actually do about it.Here's the part that gets me. Every Windows box ships with this thing turned on. You didn't ask for it. Nobody handed you a manual. It's just there, running, waiting. Mike calls it a dollar store hammer — still a tool, still gets the job done, just not the one you'd pick if anybody gave you a budget. I call it a hack-me sign taped to your back.We get into how initial access brokers work, and it's less sophisticated than you'd hope. Somebody runs a Shodan query, gets a list of every exposed RDP service on the planet with IP addresses and device types, cross-references it against leaked credentials, packages the whole thing up, and sells it. Mike says the recon that used to take days now takes about 30 seconds with the AI tools floating around the dark net.Then there's the credentials-don't-even-matter problem. Default RDP traffic isn't encrypted internally. Mike walks through a routing table poisoning job where his team captured an admin's keystrokes going to a server. No login required. Just be in the middle.The back half is all fixes. Block the protocol and the port, not one or the other, because attackers will happily move to a different port. Check 3389 before you kill it — your database might be sitting on it. Enforce network level authentication. Put a VPN or a zero trust product in front, and Mike points out enterprise-grade stuff runs about six bucks a user now, so the "no budget" excuse is thinner than it used to be. Bastion hosts. Group policy. Monitoring at the endpoint, network, and firewall layers, with a governance layer on top so you know what's allowed before something breaks at 2am.Prasanna plays devil's advocate the whole way through and swears he isn't pro-RDP. Mike wears three hats and can't pick one. I have exactly one opinion and I'm not moving off it.CHAPTERS:00:00 Windows ships with a back door01:26 Welcome and my Facebook Marketplace weekend03:18 Why RDP means Ransomware Deployment Protocol04:46 What RDP actually does05:51 Blue hat, red hat: Mike's split opinion06:11 Does RDP deserve its bad reputation?08:10 On by default, and you can't fully kill it09:30 The back door nobody locks11:52 Does the cloud secure RDP for you?14:12 Who scans for exposed RDP, and how Shodan works17:10 Initial access brokers explained18:36 Vulnerabilities that skip credentials entirely19:08 Unencrypted traffic and stolen keystrokes20:38 The never-on-the-internet rule20:59 The network survival stack: VPN and zero trust23:22 Block the port and the service24:17 Stopping lateral movement once they're inside25:25 Network level authentication27:50 Port 3389: check before you block it29:44 Bastion hosts30:26 Monitoring, auditing, and governance31:19 Blue, red, and purple hats
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  Phishing Resistant MFA: Regular MFA Isn't Enough Anymore 24.08.2026 41min

  Phishing resistant MFA is the difference between a bad guy getting one email address and a bad guy getting your entire company's inbox. On this episode, Prasanna, Dr. Mike Saylor, and I dig into why plain old multi-factor authentication isn't the finish line anymore; it's the starting line.We open with a real attack: a vulnerable REDCap database, stolen Google Workspace admin credentials, and email forwarding rules quietly running for over a year before anyone noticed. From there Mike breaks down how social engineering actually works (the research bad guys do on you before they ever send an email) and why "report as phishing" buttons have themselves become an attack vector. I share the story of the free credit monitoring scam that got me, and why freezing your credit reports is one of the best five-minute security moves you can make.Mike then walks through FIDO2 and passkeys, why they're built on old-school public/private key encryption, and why they're transactional instead of just another code sent to your phone. We cover the Flax Typhoon espionage campaign, the Raptor Train botnet, and how hard-coded credentials on IoT devices turned into root-level access for a foreign intelligence operation.Then Mike introduces "killing the trust button," which is phrase for the idea that most networks default to open, and every one of those defaults is a decision somebody made without thinking about the risk. We talk about blocking traffic by country, limiting concurrent logins, expiring MFA tokens, and why starting with your administrative accounts is the easiest place to build momentum. And yes, we talk about just asking an AI assistant like Copilot or Claude to walk you through turning this stuff on, because you probably already have these tools and don't know it.We close on why MFA by itself still isn't enough — session token theft, MFA exhaustion attacks, and the "remember this device" setting that undoes everything you just set up. If you're the person responsible for an environment with important accounts sitting there with no MFA, we've got a name for that, and it's not a nice one.Chapters:0:00 – Cold Open1:31 – Welcome to the Show4:12 – The REDCap/Google Workspace Attack8:38 – Social Engineering: How Attackers Do Their Homework13:06 – Freeze Your Credit Reports16:55 – What Is FIDO2? (Phishing Resistant MFA Explained)18:58 – Flax Typhoon and the Raptor Train Botnet24:43 – Professional Malfeasance: No More Excuses for Skipping MFA28:05 – Killing the Trust Button32:51 – Start With Your Administrative Accounts36:36 – Why MFA Alone Isn't Enough: MFA Exhaustion39:27 – Passkeys, Impossible Travel, and Final Takeaways
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  Backup Security Best Practices: Lessons From a Real Red Team Breach 17.08.2026 39min

  Backup security best practices start with one uncomfortable truth: if you haven't checked your backup server for a default password, someone else might check it for you. In this episode, Prasanna and Mike Saylor join me to dig into how backup systems become the easiest way into your network — and the easiest way out for stolen data. We walk through the real story of a red teamer who used a backup server's weak credentials to restore a domain controller straight outside the company's firewall, then had the run of the place.From there we get into the stuff that actually gets skipped: service accounts nobody's watching because they're "always on" and mostly invisible, default passwords baked into backup hardware that never get changed, and why the backup admin — usually the newest, most junior person on the team — ends up holding the keys without the security training to know what they're holding. We talk about how to find every service account you've got, how to figure out which ones actually need the privileges they've been handed, and why "it's always been that way" is exactly how breaches happen.We close out on authentication: multi-factor authentication versus passkeys, why email one-time codes aren't the security win companies think they are, and why an authenticator app with its own PIN beats "remember this device" every time. Mike also shares a story about catching failed admin logins that turned out to be something a lot more human than a hacker — and why monitoring for those anomalies matters either way.If you manage backup infrastructure, run a security team, or just got handed the backup admin job because nobody else wanted it, this episode is your checklist. Backup security best practices aren't complicated — they're just consistently ignored, and that's exactly what attackers count on.Chapters:00:00 – Cold open: the hacker on your backup server01:34 – Welcome and episode setup04:17 – The Duane Lafleur red team story06:41 – Backup servers as an exfiltration risk08:19 – Service accounts: the invisible attack surface28:40 – Locking down the admin account30:08 – MFA vs. passkeys for backup security
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  Building a Cybersecurity Culture in Your Company (Encore) 10.08.2026 55min

  Building a cybersecurity culture in your company doesn't take a bigger budget — it takes a weekly habit. In this final episode of our encore series, returning guest snorkel42, a longtime Reddit voice in InfoSec, breaks down how he turned a company with zero dedicated security staff into one with a real security culture, just by committing to one small improvement every week instead of waiting on the next six-figure product.We picked this one to bring back because of how it performed with you — not just downloads, but how much of the episode people actually stuck around for. That combination told us this conversation landed, and a lot of you came back to it more than once.snorkel42 walks through where the term "security cadence" came from: a network engineering team, no InfoSec department, and a room full of unused tools nobody had the bandwidth to run. Instead of asking for more products, the team set a rule — one security change a week, no new vendor purchases allowed — for six months straight. What happened next is the real story: leadership noticed, and the team went from begging for resources to being handed them.From there we get into what it actually took to build that cybersecurity culture day to day — the early challenges, how the team picked what to tackle first, and how a scrappy internal habit turned into something leadership actively championed. We also cover MFA, including why not all MFA is created equal, the SIM jacking risk that undercuts SMS-based codes, and the push-notification fatigue tactics attackers use to wear users down until they hit "yes" out of exhaustion. snorkel42 closes with a piece of advice worth sitting with: stop chasing the latest zero-day and start building your cybersecurity culture around how attacks actually function, start to finish. Do that, and ransomware protection comes along for free.If you're the person in your company quietly carrying the security load, or you're trying to convince leadership that culture matters more than another line-item purchase, this one's for you.00:00:00 — Cold open: you already own the tools you need00:01:36 — Show intro and disclaimers00:04:05 — Guest introduction: snorkel42's Reddit history and security cadence series00:05:53 — Where the term "security cadence" came from00:08:40 — Early challenges building the habit00:44:57 — MFA, password security, and why not all MFA is equal00:47:46 — SIM jacking and push-notification fatigue attacks00:51:45 — Patching, WannaCry, and why chasing zero-days misses the point
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  Cybersecurity Best Practices for Individuals (Encore) 03.08.2026 49min

  Cybersecurity best practices for individuals aren't complicated — they're just often ignored, and that's exactly what this encore episode digs into. This is a rerun of one of our most-engaged episodes, brought back not just because of how many people downloaded it, but because of how much of it people actually stuck around for. Curtis and Prasanna sat down with Mark Shriner, host of the SecureTalk podcast, for a wide-ranging conversation about what it actually takes to protect yourself online — no jargon, no scare tactics, just the stuff that works.Mark's path into cybersecurity started with a career pivot in 2017, and what he found was a field that goes a mile wide and a mile deep — everything from pen testing to encryption to endpoint protection. But the through-line of this conversation is that security isn't just an IT department problem anymore. It's everybody's problem, whether you're an executive with sensitive data or a parent trying to explain phishing to your kids.The conversation opens with a genuinely shocking data point: in a University of Michigan study, researchers dropped USB drives around campus, and 48% of them got plugged into a computer, some within minutes. That's the kind of thing that makes MFA (multi-factor authentication) feel less optional. Curtis shares his own MFA journey — from skeptic to evangelist — and the group breaks down why SMS-based authentication is riskier than people think, especially with SIM swapping attacks on the rise.From there, the conversation covers a lot of ground: the gift card scam that almost caught Mark's son on his third day of an internship, why "didn't expect it, don't click it" is one of the best pieces of advice you'll hear, and how phone-based social engineering is just as dangerous as email-based phishing. On the business side, Mark and Prasanna talk through device management, BYOD policies, and tools for spotting anomalous network behavior.And of course, backups get their due. Mark's advice for individuals is refreshingly simple: use a cloud-based backup service if you can, but if you can't or won't, at least use whatever's already available to you — Time Machine, an external drive, anything. The point isn't the perfect solution. It's action. Which is exactly how the episode got its name: by the end, everyone agreed the real takeaway was just do something. Don't do nothing.If you've been meaning to turn on MFA, start backing up your laptop, or just get a better handle on the basics, this is the episode to catch up on.Chapter markers: 00:00 Cold open 00:03 Meet Mark Shriner 00:10 How Mark got into cybersecurity 00:15 The University of Michigan USB drive study 00:16 Turning on MFA: Curtis's personal journey 00:19 SIM swapping and SMS authentication risks 00:23 Top security concerns for individuals 00:24 Backups, ransomware emails, and phishing basics 00:25 Being aware and pausing before you click 00:26 The gift card scam story 00:28 Phone-based scams and social engineering 00:31 Careful what you post online 00:31 Company-level MFA and security best practices 00:34 Device management and BYOD 00:35 DDI tools and data leak detection 00:43 Cybersecurity best practices for individuals: backup edition 00:45 Just do something — the summary that named the episode
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  Stopping Ransomware Lateral Movement Before It Spreads 27.07.2026 55min

  Ransomware lateral movement is exactly what it sounds like — once an attacker's inside your network, they start crawling around looking for more to encrypt, and stopping that crawl is often the difference between a bad day and a catastrophe. In this encore episode, part four of our seven-episode series pulling the best of the archives back into your feed, W. Curtis Preston and Prasanna Malaiyandi sit down with networking expert Tom Hollingsworth to break down exactly how attackers move once they're in, and what you can actually do about it.This one's back because listeners didn't just download it — they stuck with it, and a fair number of you came back for a second listen. That kind of engagement told us this conversation was worth surfacing again, especially with ransomware attacks as common as they are right now.Tom walks through the fundamentals of network segmentation — VLANs, air gaps, and why a "flat" network (where everything can talk to everything) is a gift to any attacker who gets in. From there the conversation moves into Zero Trust Network Architecture, what it actually takes to implement it at scale, and why flipping the switch from "allow everything" to "deny by default" is both the right move and the one that generates a thousand help desk tickets on day one. There's a good stretch on how schools, stadiums, and hotels handle network isolation differently than a typical enterprise, plus a practical rundown of incident response — locking down external access, isolating infected segments, keeping communication running when your own network is down, and why every kill switch needs to actually be wired to something.If you've ever wondered how much of this is built into your existing networking gear versus something you have to buy separately, or you just want a clearer mental model for how ransomware spreads once it's past the perimeter, this is a great one to revisit.Chapter Markers:00:00:00 - Intro and why ransomware lateral movement matters right now00:01:25 - Welcome back, meet Tom Hollingsworth00:04:06 - Why isolating the network is step one after a ransomware attack00:06:07 - Networking basics: how ransomware exploits flat networks00:09:31 - VLANs, air gaps, and network segmentation00:14:12 - Zero Trust Network Architecture explained00:19:02 - Managing zero trust at scale across teams00:25:48 - Special cases: schools, stadiums, and hotels00:34:31 - Blocking newly registered domains to stop command and control00:38:01 - Incident response: locking down the network00:42:12 - Keeping communication running during an attack00:44:54 - A real-world story: isolating infected devices00:50:01 - Building segmentation in from the start
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  Ransomware Response Checklist: Prevent It, Slow It, Survive It 20.07.2026 36min

  This episode is built around a ransomware response checklist — a three-part Reddit series by a security specialist who goes by snorkel42, breaking down exactly how to prevent, contain, and recover from a ransomware attack.This is an encore episode, and it's back not just because a lot of people downloaded it originally, but because so many of you listened all the way through — some of you more than once. That kind of engagement told us this one was worth bringing back.Curtis Preston and Prasanna Malaiyandi dig into snorkel42's series, which breaks the whole problem into three parts: how to stop ransomware from getting in, how to slow it down if it does, and what to actually do once you've been hit. Curtis and Prasanna go section by section — covering phishing and dropper prevention, application whitelisting, blocking lateral movement between servers, locking down RDP and SSH, honeypot files for catching intruders in the act, and building a real incident response plan before you ever need one.They also get into the messier parts most people don't talk about — what it's actually like to negotiate for a decryption key, why getting your data back isn't the end of the story, and why a ransomware attack is nothing like a normal disaster recovery scenario. Along the way, Curtis makes the case that most organizations already have the gaps this attacker needs — and that fixing them now is a lot cheaper than fixing them after the fact.Whether you're building your first incident response plan or just want to stress-test the one you've already got, this episode gives you a practical, section-by-section framework to work from.Chapter Markers:00:00 – Encore intro & episode setup00:01:37 – Show intro and banter00:06:21 – Preventing the breach: phishing, droppers, and whitelisting00:14:46 – Blocking lateral movement, RDP/SSH lockdown00:20:28 – Detecting exfiltration and honeypot files00:24:19 – What to do once you've been hit00:25:58 – Building your incident response plan00:30:43 – Decryption, ransom payments, and why it's not over yet
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  How to Protect Backups from Ransomware (Encore) 13.07.2026 43min

  How to protect backups from ransomware starts with a hard truth: attackers aren't just encrypting your data anymore, they're stealing it first — and no backup system on earth undoes an exfiltration. In this encore episode of The Backup Wrap-Up, Curtis and Prasanna dig into what real immutability looks like versus the marketing version, why root access quietly undermines most "immutable" storage claims, the difference between virtual and true physical air gaps, and the exact questions you should be firing at your backup vendor before you trust them with your last line of defense.This one's an encore for a reason — it was one of the most listened-to episodes in the show's history, with listeners sticking around for the full runtime and then some. That's the kind of signal that tells you it's worth a second run.Along the way, they cover S3 object lock and what actually happens if your account gets deleted or your credit card stops working, why compromised admin credentials are involved in the majority of attacks and what your vendor should be able to undo, and why bit rot — rare, but nasty when it's silent — still belongs on your checklist. If you manage backup or DR for a living, or you're just trying to figure out whether your current setup would actually hold up, this episode gives you a concrete list of questions to ask and red flags to watch for.Chapters:00:00 – Cold Open: Ransomware Is After Your Backups01:19 – Welcome & Banter05:50 – Topic Setup: Protecting Backups from Ransomware07:36 – The Extortion & Exfiltration Playbook15:25 – What Is an Air Gap?18:22 – Virtual Air Gaps27:57 – Real (Physical) Air Gaps28:12 – What Is Immutability, Really?29:23 – Bit Rot30:42 – Root Access & the Limits of Immutability32:51 – S3 Object Lock40:20 – Questions to Ask Your Backup Vendor42:31 – What Happens If You Delete Your Account?44:29 – Compromised Credentials & Worst-Case Scenarios46:41 – Final Thoughts
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  What Is Data Deduplication? (Encore) 06.07.2026 46min

  What is data deduplication, and why does Curtis call it the single most important development in backup over the last 30 years? In this encore episode, W. Curtis Preston and Prasanna Malaiyandi break down exactly how dedupe works, why it's not the same as compression, and why the fine print of your dedupe domain determines how much storage you actually save.This episode originally aired as part of the Backup to Basics series, and it's back because listeners couldn't get enough of it — not just downloads, but people who stuck around for the whole conversation, some more than once. That says something, because this isn't a surface-level explainer. Curtis and Prasanna get into fingerprints, dedupe indexes, and the real-world tradeoffs between file-level and block-level dedupe.You'll hear why Curtis argues that file-level dedupe isn't "real" dedupe at all, just single-instance storage wearing a costume. Then the conversation shifts to the split that shapes entire product categories: source-side dedupe versus target-side dedupe. Curtis walks through why source dedupe requires you to essentially replace your backup software, while target dedupe lets you bolt an appliance onto whatever you're already running. Prasanna pushes back on some of the assumptions along the way, which is exactly the kind of back-and-forth that made this episode stick with listeners the first time around.By the end, they even get into hybrid dedupe, a concept that splits the difference and confuses almost everyone the first time they hear about it.If you've ever wondered why your backup storage doesn't need to be 30 or 40 times the size of your production data, or you just want to finally understand what your backup vendor means when they throw around terms like "dedupe ratio," this is the episode that clears it up.Chapters:00:00 – Intro08:10 – What Is Data Deduplication?12:24 – Dedupe vs. Compression16:13 – Fingerprints and the Dedupe Index16:52 – What's a Dedupe Domain?19:48 – Is File-Level Dedupe Really Dedupe?21:53 – Source Dedupe vs. Target Dedupe28:20 – What Is Hybrid Dedupe?
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  The REDCap Attack that Phishing-Resistant MFA Could Have Stopped 22.06.2026 34min

  Phishing-resistant MFA could have stopped a Chinese state-sponsored threat actor from spending over a year inside North American academic and medical research networks — and we're going to tell you exactly how it happened and what you need to do about it.A group called UNC5608, tracked by Google's Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG), exploited a vulnerability unique to REDCap — a research data platform that allows multiple software versions to run simultaneously. They got in via stolen admin credentials, planted custom malware called Infinite.red directly into REDCap's upgrade process, harvested credentials for over a year, then used those credentials to log into Google Workspace as a domain admin and create fake compliance rules to silently forward sensitive research emails — military strategy, geostrategic policy, advanced tech, specific pathogens — straight to Gmail accounts they controlled. And nobody noticed for a very long time.Prasanna and I break down the full attack chain, then walk through every prevention layer that could have stopped it: inventory management, patching, password hygiene, SSO, phishing-resistant MFA, passkeys, DBSC, context-aware access, compliance rule monitoring, credential separation across security domains, and logging. We also get into what backups can and can't do for you in a long-dwell-time attack like this — and why infrastructure-as-code and truly immutable golden images matter more than you might think.If you're running any kind of research platform, academic institution, or medical network — or honestly any organization that uses Google Workspace — this one's for you.Chapters:00:00 — Intro: The attack that phishing-resistant MFA could have stopped01:03 — Show intro & woodworking banter03:26 — What is a living-off-the-land attack?04:02 — Who is UNC5608 and who did they target?05:08 — How REDCap's multi-version design was exploited06:11 — Infinite.red malware and credential harvesting09:01 — Google Workspace infiltration via fake compliance rules10:18 — The keywords they were stealing: pathogens, military strategy, and more11:50 — What could the victims have done differently?12:42 — Inventory management, patching, and legacy version removal14:00 — Why you can't trust application-level authentication alone — use SSO15:18 — Phishing-resistant MFA and why it matters16:00 — Passkeys, FIDO, and why there are zero known attacks against them17:57 — Device-bound session credentials (DBSC) and context-aware access19:38 — Monitor your compliance rules — have a compliance rule for the compliance rule20:40 — Credential separation across security domains23:00 — Get some logging — XDR, SIEM, and catching exfiltration in progress24:00 — What can backups actually do in a long-dwell-time attack?27:00 — Infrastructure-as-code and the right cyber recovery approach28:58 — Protecting your golden images with immutable storage31:59 — Wrap-up
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  California Election Fraud? (Pt 2) 15.06.2026 35min

  California election fraud claims are flooding social media — and most of them fall apart under basic scrutiny. In this follow-up episode, longtime San Diego County poll worker W. Curtis Preston tackles the wave of viral fraud allegations head-on, with sources so you can check his work yourself.Topics covered: the LA mayoral race "statistically impossible" surge for Nithya Raman, the AP reporting error that got blamed on fraud, claims that Spencer Pratt voters were having ballots rejected for signatures, the "gym membership card" voter ID myth, the Skid Row "paid to vote" controversy, and yes — the one claim that turned out to be true (a woman who actually did register her dog to vote).If you've seen these claims and wondered whether there's anything to them, this episode walks through the actual data, the actual law, and the actual outcomes — no spin, just the facts from someone counting the votes.Here are some sources:Los Angeles 2026 Mayor primary results:https://results.lavote.gov/#year=2026&election=4338Donald Trump got 27% of City of LA vote in 2024:https://xtown.la/2024/12/16/a-city-country-divide-more-than-70-percent-of-los-angeles-voters-picked-kamala-harris-for-president/There were 12,700 rejected ballots in all of LA county:https://perma.cc/E5Y9-NURQOrange County woman registered her dog:https://www.foxla.com/news/costa-mesa-woman-dog-voter-fraud-sentencingHeritage Foundation Voter Fraud Database:https://electionfraud.heritage.org/search
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  California Election Counting Explained by an Actual Poll Worker 08.06.2026 24min

  California election counting has confused — and frankly ticked off — a lot of people, and I get it. I'm W. Curtis Preston, I've worked every California election since the 2016 presidential primary, and I've managed the polls at multiple elections here in San Diego County. This episode, I'm going solo to explain exactly what's going on, why it takes so long, what the "red mirage" actually is, and why none of it is fraud. Sorry to disappoint some of you.If you've ever had a family member call you asking "what the hell is going on over there?" — this one's for you. I walk through the specific changes California made to election law, how our system compares to Florida's, why human nature is a big part of the problem, and what the chain of custody for every single ballot actually looks like from the inside. This isn't punditry. This is someone who has stood at those poll books, sealed those ballot cartons, and escorted those ballots to the DART team.Chapters:0:00 – Introduction: What the hell is going on in California?1:23 – Who I am and why I can speak to this2:12 – How California election law changed six years ago4:43 – The mail ballot window: postmark by 8 PM, received within 7 days5:09 – Vote centers vs. the old precinct model7:39 – California vs. Florida: why the laws produce such different results9:09 – Why California voters wait until the last minute14:12 – The red mirage explained: it's not fraud, it's math15:31 – Signature verification: 80,000–100,000 per day in San Diego alone16:35 – How computers count ballots — and the 1% manual audit that checks them19:11 – Chain of custody: two people, sealed cartons, tracked numbers20:17 – Debunking the "law enforcement can't observe" myth21:24 – Dead people voting? Let's talk about what's actually happening22:47 – Wrap-up
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  Stop 90% of Ransomware Attacks with Basic Cyber Hygiene 25.05.2026 40min

  Basic cyber hygiene — patch management, password management, and MFA — is responsible for stopping roughly 90% of the ransomware attacks that could hit your organization. This episode is the overview: what those three things are, why they matter, and what happens when you skip them.WannaCry infected over 200,000 systems worldwide. A patch existed. People just hadn't applied it. Rackspace lost an entire business line — not because the attack was sophisticated, but because a workaround gave them false confidence and they delayed a critical patch. These aren't edge cases. They're the rule.Dr. Mike Saylor (Black Swan Cybersecurity) and Prasanna Malaiyandi join me to walk through the three pillars of basic cyber hygiene. We cover patch management first — and before you can even patch, you have to know what you have. Inventory is the starting point. Then we get into passwords: why reusing them is a numbers game the bad guys always win, and why a password manager isn't optional anymore. Finally, MFA — what it is, which forms are actually worth using, and why "remember this device" is quietly defeating the whole point.This is an overview episode. We're going deeper on each pillar in three follow-up episodes. But if you're not doing these three things today, stop reading this and go do them. There's no point talking about EDR, XDR, or any other three-letter security product if you haven't nailed the basics first. It's like researching a Roth IRA when you don't have a savings account.Chapters:0:00 Intro0:59 Welcome & Introductions4:20 WannaCry: The Patch That Would Have Saved 200,000 Systems7:33 Rackspace: When a Workaround Isn't Enough12:12 Defining Basic Cyber Hygiene14:53 Why These Three Things Stop 90% of Ransomware17:54 Pillar 1: Patch Management23:55 Pillar 2: Password Management31:55 Pillar 3: MFA & Passkeys37:34 Wrap-Up & What's Next
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  Claude Deletes a Company — But It's Not Really Claude's Fault 18.05.2026 40min

  Claude deletes a company — and the internet immediately blamed the AI. But this story is really about backup design, credential management, and least privilege. An AI coding agent running Claude via Cursor deleted PocketOS's entire production database and all its backups in nine seconds. One bad design decision at a time, a startup built itself a disaster waiting to happen. Claude just happened to be the thing that set it off.Here's what you need to understand: the AI violated the principles it was given, and that's on Claude. But Claude never should have had access to do what it did. Credentials were sitting in a plain text YAML file. The production database and its backups lived on the same volume. No least privilege. No expiration on elevated permissions. And almost certainly, no backup recovery test — ever.In this episode, Curtis and Prasanna break down what actually went wrong with PocketOS, what Railway did to help recover the data, and what you need to do to make sure this never happens to you. Topics covered include backup isolation, the 3-2-1 rule, secrets management tools like AWS Secrets Manager and HashiCorp Vault, least privilege access, permission expiration, and credential scanning tools like TruffleHog.Chapters:0:00 — Intro: Meet the villain1:50 — Welcome and introducing "the French friend"3:48 — What Claude actually did to PocketOS7:20 — This is a backup story, not an AI story9:27 — The recovery: Railway, a weekend of chaos, and a lucky Twitter post12:31 — Your data is your responsibility — not your vendor's17:48 — Rule #1: Never store backups inside production20:37 — The real problem: credential management23:38 — Secrets management tools explained25:21 — Least privilege and why permissions need expiration dates34:59 — Finding exposed credentials with TruffleHog37:24 — Summary and takeaways
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  How Honeypots and Canary Files Catch Attackers Before They Strike 11.05.2026 33min

  Honeypots and canary files are two of the most underused tools in cybersecurity — and in this episode, Dr. Mike Saylor and I break down exactly how they work and why you should be using them. The short version: they're tripwires. They tell you a bad guy is poking around your network before anything gets encrypted.Mike walks through his layered security analogy, explains the three different ways organizations use honeypots — learning attacker tactics, distraction, and testing — and then we get into canary files: what makes them different from a honeypot, how they beacon home when stolen, and why clock synchronization matters more than most people think if you ever want that evidence to hold up.We also cover how to stand one up without a big budget, what tools are available, and why something is absolutely better than nothing. Plus, Mike and I have news about our new O'Reilly book, Learning Ransomware Response and Recovery.0:00 - Intro and book news1:09 - Meet the crew3:45 - Security is all about layers9:22 - What are honeypots and canary files?11:00 - Three ways honeypots work for you13:17 - Real-world examples: bait cars and glitter bombs15:20 - Making your honeypot convincing19:11 - Honeypot tools and options21:13 - Something is better than nothing24:10 - Monitoring and notifications25:05 - Canary files explained27:03 - How canary files beacon and track attackers28:03 - Don't forget to sync your clocks29:05 - Final thoughts
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  Network Segmentation to Prevent Ransomware: What the UCSF Attack Taught Us 04.05.2026 47min

  Network segmentation to prevent ransomware isn't just a nice-to-have — the UCSF ransomware attack proves it's what separates a contained incident from a catastrophe. UCSF got hit. Their segmented network kept the damage from spreading across their entire operation. That's the difference we're talking about in this episode.Dr. Mike Saylor — my co-author on Learning Ransomware Response and Recovery — joins me and Prasanna to break down exactly how network segmentation works, why it matters for ransomware defense, and how to start doing it without breaking everything in the process. (Not that I've ever done that. Much.)We cover what segmentation actually is, how VLANs make it manageable, the "need to talk" principle, and where microsegmentation fits in — and when it becomes overkill. We also get into the complexity trap: more rules and more layers don't automatically mean more protection. Sometimes they mean nobody can troubleshoot anything when the house is on fire.If you're an IT admin trying to make the case for better network architecture, or you just want to understand what would actually stop ransomware from ripping through your environment, this is the episode.Chapters:00:00:00 — Intro00:01:40 — Welcome & Guest Introductions00:05:17 — Case Study: UCSF Ransomware Attack00:08:13 — What Is Network Segmentation?00:12:32 — VLANs Explained00:19:50 — The Need to Talk Principle00:30:54 — Complexity vs. Security00:31:09 — Microsegmentation00:38:55 — Action Items: Where to Start00:42:05 — Monitoring VLAN Traffic
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  Stop Using VSS as a Backup Before Ransomware Deletes Your Shadow Copies 27.04.2026 36min

  Stop Using VSS as a Backup Before Ransomware Deletes Your Shadow CopiesRansomware deletes shadow copies using your own built-in Windows tools against you — and if VSS was your backup plan, you just found out the hard way that it wasn't. In this episode, W. Curtis Preston (Mr. Backup), Prasanna Malaiyandi, and Dr. Mike Saylor break down exactly what shadow copies are, why they don't qualify as a real backup, and how attackers are weaponizing vssadmin to wipe your recovery options before you even know you're under attack.If you've got Windows systems and you've been thinking "eh, we've got shadow copies," this episode is for you. We cover the history of VSS — what it was actually designed for, why it became a crutch, and why using it as your primary backup strategy is a bad idea on multiple levels. Performance, the 3-2-1 rule, and the fact that one attacker with admin rights can delete every single copy in seconds. We also get into the living off the land angle: how attackers do recon on your shadow copies, how they use them to scope out valuable data before going full ransomware, and what you can actually do to detect and respond to this behavior using EDR tools.The bottom line: VSS is a great tool. It was just never meant to be your backup. Get a real one.Chapters:0:00 — Intro1:39 — Welcome & Book Talk3:26 — What Are Shadow Copies and Why Do People Use Them as Backups?9:14 — Performance Problems with VSS as a Backup10:19 — Living Off the Land: How Ransomware Uses VSS Against You12:36 — Can You Monitor or Lock Down VSS Admin?14:26 — Why Shadow Copies Fail the 3-2-1 Rule (They're Not a Backup)18:01 — How to Protect Yourself: Configuring Your EDR21:31 — The Local Admin Problem and Security Culture27:00 — Virtualization, Snapshots, and Shadow Copies29:00 — Final Thoughts: Just Don't Do That
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  Ransomware Sanctions, OFAC, and the Lazarus Group: A Real Case Study 20.04.2026 36min

  Ransomware sanctions are something most companies never think about — until they're staring down a ransom demand from a group the US government has already put on a sanctions list. In this episode, Dr. Mike Saylor walks us through a real incident involving a construction company, hundreds of millions in active contracts, and the Lazarus Group — a North Korean state-sponsored threat actor. Before that company could pay a single dollar in ransom, they had to figure out whether doing so would trigger federal penalties that dwarfed the ransom itself. We're talking fines of 10x to 100x the payment amount, and in some jurisdictions, jail time.This is one of those episodes where the story alone is worth your time. Mike was in the room for this incident, negotiating directly with the Lazarus Group over a weekend — and yes, it turns out North Korean cybercriminals have a surprisingly functional help desk. But beyond the story, there's real actionable information here about OFAC (the Office of Foreign Asset Control), how the US Treasury tracks Bitcoin wallets to identify sanctioned actors, and what you actually need to do the moment ransomware hits your organization.We also get into why paying a ransom paints a target on your back — 70% of companies that pay get hit again within six months — and why immutable backups are the only thing that truly keeps you out of this situation.Chapters:0:00 Intro1:31 Meet the Guests: Curtis, Prasanna, and Dr. Mike Saylor4:10 Case Study: A Construction Company and the Lazarus Group6:34 Are These Bad Guys Sanctioned? Introducing OFAC8:05 Why Ransomware Funds Terrorism, Drug Trafficking, and Worse11:00 Sanctions Penalties: Fines That Can Put You Out of Business12:24 Colonial Pipeline and Exceptions for Critical Infrastructure13:26 How the Government Tracks Bitcoin Wallets16:27 Global Sanctions: UK and Australia Have Their Own Rules18:31 Pay Once, Pay Again: The 70% Re-Attack Rate20:43 Proof of Life: Don't Pay Without It23:38 What To Do When You Get Hit: The Right Order of Operations25:17 Immutable Backups: The Only Real Answer27:07 How the Construction Company's Backups Got Wiped33:07 Build Your Team Before the Bad Day: FBI InfraGard and More