Gabe Gambill Returns: What Happens When There's No Backup Left

September 5, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

In 2005, after Hurricane Katrina destroyed the data centers in New Orleans, the city discovered its cloud backups had already expired. The retention policy was only 30 days, and the disaster lasted much longer. An army of college students had to manually re-enter nine years of housing data from a single outdated tape. The cost approached a billion dollars. The IT employee who had warned management in writing that the plan was insufficient still lost her job. That story anchors this conversation between the Cyber Crime Junkies hosts and Gabe Gambill, vice president of product and technical operations at Quorum, a backup and recovery company. The episode is about what happens when the fundamentals fail, why they fail, and what practitioners can do to prepare for the moment when "it" finally goes bad.

The Katrina Mechanism: How Cost-Cutting Creates Catastrophic Blind Spots

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What you'll learn

1 (00:03) **Episode Open & Guest Introduction** - The host frames the episode around the human cost of data breaches and introduces returning guest Gabe Gambill.
2 (06:11) **Quorum’s Origin and Mission** - Gabe explains how Quorum evolved from a military policy engine into a backup and recovery company focused on easy recovery.
3 (08:53) **Quorum’s Product Evolution** - The company expanded from on-premise appliances to cloud replication and cloud-to-cloud backup.
4 (11:45) **Why Gabe Focuses on Cybersecurity** - Gabe’s firsthand experience with vulnerabilities and the inevitability of breaches drove his focus on recovery.
5 (15:08) **The Vulnerability Disclosure Dilemma** - The host raises the problem of vendors announcing vulnerabilities publicly, giving attackers a head start before patches are applied.
6 (23:45) **The Katrina Data Disaster** - Gabe tells the story of how a cost-saving decision on backup retention compounded the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina.
7 (29:39) **The CISO’s Paper Trail** - The conversation shifts to the importance of documenting security recommendations to protect the IT leader when a breach occurs.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

Gabe Gambill, international technology expert with Quorum (https://get.quorum.com/) who leads executives to understand what happens when data back ups fail and how to plan accordingly.

Summary

In this conversation, Dino Mauro interviews Gabe Gimble, Vice President of Products and Technical Operations at Quorum, about his journey into technology and cybersecurity. They discuss the challenges of patching vulnerabilities, the importance of data backup and recovery, and the role of the CISO in securing an organization.

They also share a story about the impact of data loss during Hurricane Katrina and the need for proper retention policies. In this conversation, Dino Mauro and Gabe Gumbs discuss the importance of having a paper trail and making recommendations backed by evidence in cybersecurity. They emphasize the need for strategic thinking and the use of advanced threat hunters and platforms to detect and prevent breaches.

They also highlight the importance of making an internal business case for cybersecurity investments and quantifying the ROI. The conversation touches on the different impacts of breaches, the challenges faced by small businesses, and the potential for a grading system or informal evaluation of vendors based on their handling of breaches.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Podcast Overview
01:05 Gabe Gimble's Background and Journey into Technology and Cybersecurity
03:26 The Challenges of Patching Vulnerabilities
05:48 The Importance of Data Backup and Recovery
08:12 The Role of the CISO in Securing an Organization
21:18 The Impact of Data Loss during Hurricane Katrina
27:30 The Importance of a Paper Trail in Cybersecurity
28:27 Making Recommendations Backed by Evidence
29:20 Making an Internal Business Case for Cybersecurity Investments
30:18 Differentiating Between Breaches in the News and Contained Breaches
32:47 Challenges Faced by Small Businesses in Investing in Security
37:05 Quantifying the Impact of Breaches
41:20 The Role of Boom and Post-Boom in Cybersecurity
45:41 The Impact of Breaches on Small Companies
48:03 The Potential for a Grading System for Vendor Evaluation

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