The Update That Broke America with Gabe Dimeglio

Easy Prey

Many industries are reliant on software and if the software becomes corrupt or an update fails, it may require hands-on support. Do you have your infrastructure set for repair and recovery?

Today’s guest is Gabe Dimeglio. Gabe is a 20-year veteran of information technology and security for private and public sector organizations. He is a results-driven leader, specializing in security services and solutions for mission-critical, complex enterprise platforms. His expertise includes strategic consulting services, risk analysis/risk mitigation, and compliance.

Mr. Dimeglio serves as Vice President & Executive Advisor, Security, Office of the CTO at Rimini Street. He is responsible for oversight of the GSS organization that provides tailored consulting and advisory security services to prospects and clients, in collaboration with Rimini Street sales, client engagement, and retention functions.

Show Notes:

• [1:18] - Gabe shares his background and what he does in his roles at Rimini Street.
• [2:38] - Anyone can be a victim of a scam. That includes Gabe.
• [4:03] - Scams are very sophisticated and techniques have come a long way in the last decade.
• [5:23] - Gabe describes what happened with the update that shut down much of the United States’ systems and infrastructure.
• [8:30] - To complicate things, the platform could not be restarted with this update in effect.
• [10:42] - Updates are sideloaded continuously and are processed by this kernel driver. The thought process is interesting because it has happened before.
• [12:37] - This was the biggest problem caused by Crowdstrike.
• [14:47] - One mistake out of 10,000 updates is a low error rate, but there is a lot of reputation damage done in this event.
• [16:50] - In the case of Crowdstrike, turning off auto-update was not an option.
• [18:43] - Any time software, programs, or data are introduced, you’re also introducing risk.
• [21:04] - Part of the solution to fixing this massive problem was hands-on support on every box.
• [26:13] - One problem is that there are some industries where technology is very outdated.
• [27:23] - People are selling their solutions and the solutions are cloud-managed. This is scary due to frequent cloud breaches.
• [31:10] - There are still businesses that have no security professionals or teams managing client data and safety.
• [32:53] - The skills gap is crushing most businesses.
• [35:03] - Security has come a long way, even if there are still areas of lack.
• [37:01] - For the last couple of years, security has been something that there is a budget for in most businesses.
• [40:49] - Don’t ever let anyone convince you to shortcut anything.

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