Your Cloud Held Hostage – Could It Happen?

  • GoofyGuy (4/6/2015)


    If you host my data, and your building burns down, including all backups, I don't have any data. Therefore I don't own anything, you do, even if you only own the responsibility.

    I would imagine the host would make regular backups and store them offsite.

    I'd also think the host would have hot sites ready to go in case the building burnt down. (Hey ... if it burnt down, would that make it a hot site?)

    They go out of business?

    Obama, I mean the feds, decide to invade, I mean serve warrants, against the company and lock everyone out?

    Their systems are infected and nobody notices the backups are no good for longer than they have backups available?

    There are a million ways your data could be compromised. Yes, the same things could happen if it is local, but at least local I only have to worry about my company, not the hosting company.

    Dave

  • GoofyGuy (4/6/2015)


    If you host my data, and your building burns down, including all backups, I don't have any data. Therefore I don't own anything, you do, even if you only own the responsibility.

    I would imagine the host would make regular backups and store them offsite.

    I'd also think the host would have hot sites ready to go in case the building burnt down. (Hey ... if it burnt down, would that make it a hot site?)

    Unfortunately both parties will loose and it will probably hurt the "hostee" more then the "host" as if one digs down into the small print of most insurance/sla/tc's, there is no such thing as forwarded responsability, hence no payout.

    😎

  • djackson 22568 (4/6/2015)


    GoofyGuy (4/6/2015)


    If you host my data, and your building burns down, including all backups, I don't have any data. Therefore I don't own anything, you do, even if you only own the responsibility.

    I would imagine the host would make regular backups and store them offsite.

    I'd also think the host would have hot sites ready to go in case the building burnt down. (Hey ... if it burnt down, would that make it a hot site?)

    They go out of business?

    Obama, I mean the feds, decide to invade, I mean serve warrants, against the company and lock everyone out?

    Their systems are infected and nobody notices the backups are no good for longer than they have backups available?

    There are a million ways your data could be compromised. Yes, the same things could happen if it is local, but at least local I only have to worry about my company, not the hosting company.

    Agreed. The backups weren't checked...ever. The internet went down during the backup that was supposed to be scheduled, but never was scheduled because the employee quit and there was no backup for that person. The invasion occurred at the wrong time of day. The power went out in some backwoods piece of nowhere where their off-site backups were down. They have special disclaimers for the weather.

    I'd rather worry about my own data instead of worrying about someone else doing nothing about data they don't own.

  • Ed Wagner wrote:

    If you do have it backed up and it's recoverable, I have to wait for you to recover it and make it available to me again. When will that get done?

    But ... would you sign a hosting contract that doesn't have provisions for secure offsite backups and an SLA for hot site recovery (with a nice little damages provision in case of non-performance)?

    Of course you wouldn't. Neither would anyone else here.

    I do understand your point; we'd all like to be the captains of our own fate, and of our own data ... or at least think we are. But disasters do happen, and Murphy isn't going to pick just on hosted sites.

    I'm sure you're extremely competent at what you do, Ed, and that you're stellar at DR. But not everyone is as good as you. Given some of the operational staff I've worked with over the decades, I'm not sure I'd trust them more than I'd trust a competent cloud storage host company.

  • Eirikur Eiriksson (4/6/2015)


    GoofyGuy (4/6/2015)


    If you host my data, and your building burns down, including all backups, I don't have any data. Therefore I don't own anything, you do, even if you only own the responsibility.

    I would imagine the host would make regular backups and store them offsite.

    I'd also think the host would have hot sites ready to go in case the building burnt down. (Hey ... if it burnt down, would that make it a hot site?)

    Unfortunately both parties will loose and it will probably hurt the "hostee" more then the "host" as if one digs down into the small print of most insurance/sla/tc's, there is no such thing as forwarded responsability, hence no payout.

    😎

    Yes, and when it gets to that level, all scenarios have certain things in common:

    1. Someone else may have your data.

    2. You don't have your data.

    Both mean you lose.

  • djackson wrote:

    Obama, I mean the feds, decide to invade, I mean serve warrants, against the company and lock everyone out?

    If something like that were to happen, we'd have far worse problems than not being able to get at some data.

  • GoofyGuy (4/6/2015)


    Ed Wagner wrote:

    If you do have it backed up and it's recoverable, I have to wait for you to recover it and make it available to me again. When will that get done?

    But ... would you sign a hosting contract that doesn't have provisions for secure offsite backups and an SLA for hot site recovery (with a nice little damages provision in case of non-performance)?

    Of course you wouldn't. Neither would anyone else here.

    I do understand your point; we'd all like to be the captains of our own fate, and of our own data ... or at least think we are. But disasters do happen, and Murphy isn't going to pick just on hosted sites.

    I'm sure you're extremely competent at what you do, Ed, and that you're stellar at DR. But not everyone is as good as you. Given some of the operational staff I've worked with over the decades, I'm not sure I'd trust them more than I'd trust a competent cloud storage host company.

    Which is why sometimes hosting is a better option. Small companies that can't afford a competent IT staff may do better paying someone to manage their servers.

    Dave

  • djackson wrote:

    Small companies that can't afford a competent IT staff may do better paying someone to manage their servers.

    It's not necessarily an issue limited to small companies, Dave. Big or small, if a company's management believes its operational staff is competent ... well, I'd imagine you get my drift.

    Sometimes it takes a disaster to discover these things.

  • Ed Wagner (4/6/2015)


    Eirikur Eiriksson (4/6/2015)


    GoofyGuy (4/6/2015)


    If you host my data, and your building burns down, including all backups, I don't have any data. Therefore I don't own anything, you do, even if you only own the responsibility.

    I would imagine the host would make regular backups and store them offsite.

    I'd also think the host would have hot sites ready to go in case the building burnt down. (Hey ... if it burnt down, would that make it a hot site?)

    Unfortunately both parties will loose and it will probably hurt the "hostee" more then the "host" as if one digs down into the small print of most insurance/sla/tc's, there is no such thing as forwarded responsability, hence no payout.

    😎

    Yes, and when it gets to that level, all scenarios have certain things in common:

    1. Someone else may have your data.

    2. You don't have your data.

    Both mean you lose.

    So true, if only I had.....:pinch:

    😎

  • There's a lot of things that can happen, but these are all fringe examples, at least in the current political environment. You can't guard against everything, and if you worry about a biochemical attack, then you are using time that could be used to guard against much more likely threats. It's unrealistic to expect a civilian site to be able to repel a military style attack. We depend on government agencies to deal with these threats so that we can concentrate on others.

  • RonKyle (4/6/2015)


    There's a lot of things that can happen, but these are all fringe examples, at least in the current political environment. You can't guard against everything, and if you worry about a biochemical attack, then you are using time that could be used to guard against much more likely threats. It's unrealistic to expect a civilian site to be able to repel a military style attack. We depend on government agencies to deal with these threats so that we can concentrate on others.

    Agree.

  • RonKyle (4/6/2015)


    There's a lot of things that can happen, but these are all fringe examples, at least in the current political environment. You can't guard against everything, and if you worry about a biochemical attack, then you are using time that could be used to guard against much more likely threats. It's unrealistic to expect a civilian site to be able to repel a military style attack. We depend on government agencies to deal with these threats so that we can concentrate on others.

    You can't guard against everything, but you still have to take reasonable precautions and take measures to protect your data. Most of the scenarios (however far fetched you believe them to be) scream the same thing "Back Up Your Data!".

    This is nothing new. We went though this with mirroring and RAID and Lan Storage and every other technology that made people THINK that backups were redundant and no longer necessary. Now it's cloud storage and people ASSUME their data is safe. In reality, the risks have just changed and something else will cause data loss instead of the old problems.

    Moral of the story, backup your data and have contingency plans.

  • GoofyGuy (4/6/2015)


    ... would you sign a hosting contract that doesn't have provisions for secure offsite backups and an SLA for hot site recovery (with a nice little damages provision in case of non-performance)?

    Of course you wouldn't. Neither would anyone else here.

    ...

    Really, some of the DBAs I have interviewed over the years would pass the buck to other teams and yes they would never dream of due-diligence. Also, some of the companies (typically the SME) I have worked for have the mentality of not testing backups, not planning, and not wanting to spend the extra. Or they would assume that if there is bigger DR event then they would be at the front of the queue.

  • Geo-replication and geo-backups are two different things. Every cloud data vendor should have daily or weekly off-site backups that include even the lowest tier customers who arn't paying for geo-replicatation.

    "Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho

  • If you have some slush money left over in your disaster recovery planning budget, you can play off the fear of executive management by blocking off an entire day to screen 'Zombie Apocalypse' and 'Sharknado 3' in a conference room, inviting the entire DBA team and ordering pizza.

    "Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho

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