Episode 5: Plan Now to Survive Later

This week, I welcome Tyler Meyer, from FourQ. Tyler has an extensive background in cybersecurity. In this episode, Tyler is discusses how important it is to have a tested backup and disaster recovery plan in order to maximize your chances of surviving a cyber attack. It's not a question of "if", but "when" your business will be subject to a cyber attack. So, in addition to ensuring appropriate protections are in place, be ready to react.

Here is the link to the study Tyler references in our discussion: 2021 Security Outcomes Study for Small to Midsize Businesses (SMBs) (cisco.com)

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hello and welcome to this week's episode of cyber snacks where we serve up cybersecurity tips that are short,
simple,
actionable and reasonable.
I'm excited this week to have Tyler Meyer With four Q joining me.
Tyler has been in the security and technology space for a long time and in a a lot of different roles he's joining us today,

(00:25):
we're gonna jump right into things.
Tyler.
Thanks for joining me.
You're welcome David,
thank you for having me.
You've been in the security space for a long time and you've been involved in a lot of different ways.
So I know you have a ton of things that you could talk about but when it comes to you know what people should be doing.

(00:48):
If there's one thing that they need to be doing right now,
what would that be?
Well,
I think the first component and of course the list is long but the first component in my mind,
the premier focal point should be a sound security strategy that that focuses on prompt disaster recovery for small and medium sized businesses.

(01:16):
They are much more susceptible to outages,
issues,
whether it be viruses malware,
You know,
things of that nature log 4J recently hit everybody.
Uh and so you know when you look at um Any sort of studies that have been done,

(01:37):
Cisco did one recently there 2021 security outcome study and small and medium sized businesses that it had a sound strategy uh markedly measured better on all of the metrics that Cisco looked at.
So I think it's uh it's a sound place to begin and I think the disaster recovery helps protect the organization,

(02:03):
protect the data,
protect the privacy and obviously again long,
long list of of other items,
but but if I had to recommend a starting place,
that would be it.
So it's more about not necessarily the prevention but the preparation for a situation when it occurs.

(02:25):
Well,
I I think the preparation is important and I don't mean to downplay that,
but there's always something new coming and you know,
it's there,
it just hasn't been discovered yet.
Uh you know,
whether or not there's an exploit for that vulnerability,
you know,
that's a different different conversation,
but it's always going to be a constant battle against whatever the next thing is and the next evolution and cops and robbers.

(02:50):
Right,
Good guys,
bad guys.
So but I think if you have that really sound strategy and plan and you know where you want to end up and you have that backstop of of a disaster recovery plan,
that's,
you know,
prompt and can be,
can be executed in the case of uh an issue then I think that that puts you on pretty good footing.

(03:14):
And so it's not a matter of if but when Yeah,
I believe it,
yeah,
it's a matter of time when you talk about backup disaster recovery,
you have that disaster recovery piece in there.
It's a whole lot more than just having backups.
Right?
Oh sure,
Absolutely.
It's it's not just the backups themselves,

(03:34):
it's testing them,
it's you know a run book if you're you know developer or somebody who's writing code or providing code as a as a product or a service,
it's that idea of you know what is our step by step process and and how do we implement it and when do we implement it?

(03:56):
And that that becomes part of a larger business continuity plan which which starts to get a little bit outside of you know I.
T.
And involves more of the organization but it's it's a critical piece and you know your backups are only as good as your last restore and and they need to be tested and and even you know now with so many cloud based services and and appliances and virtualization,

(04:21):
you know how you you know if if you're going to if you have to recreate that whole environment,
how long is that going to take before you can even restore?
Uh So you know if you're not,
you know I mean are you using something like chloroform or or you know kubernetes or you know what are you doing to you know those clusters to to help you with those kinds of things uh you know it it becomes a time consuming task to to do all that by hand and do all that manually.

(04:46):
So that becomes part of that sound strategy and and part of that disaster recovery,
not just the backup of the data itself.
I think that this is really beneficial to people.
I want to thank you again for joining us.
I hope you have an awesome week and I look forward to having everybody back for another episode next week.