Automatic Air-Gap

[ARHT]

I have been pondering Gostev's idea of having a PC auto start/stop to completely isolate it from potential attack, and along those lines have a plan that seems too simple to be true so I thought I'd toss it in this forum for 'peer review'.

I have a simple set-up in that we're a small organisation but operate 24hrs with around 40 staff active at any one time. I have three different backup routines and a true air-gap drive that contains two of those methods (Veeam and Imaging) that come off-site with me daily.

The third method is replication of our host to a location across town. Other than being a disaster-recovery component this remote host serves no other purpose, with all replicated VM's remaining powered-off.

So it strikes me that the easiest way to isolate this host is to have a wifi power adapter (on a totally separate network) power off and on the switch that connects it to the primary network. These things are a dime-a-dozen and can be controlled from your mobile or on a schedule. No worries about dirty shutdowns or having to create a process to do a graceful shutdown - just power-off the switch! This could equally apply to a back-up PC or SAN etc.

I know with won't satisfy all scenarios, but am I missing something here? It just seems too easy!

Cheers, Jeff.

[Gostev]

That is a great idea indeed, as this effectively pulls a network cable from the DR server = the ultimate air gap

[nickcasa3]

Came across this, really good cheap fast solution, however if you setup a schedule to turn it off and on, what if the backups runs over the scheduled period or something? my off site copy job usually finishes in about 6 hours or so. curious if anyone else has a concern like mine, ty.

[Steve-nIP]

That's actually a really nice solution.

[nitramd]

Nick,

It seems that scripting might be of use for your scenario, i.e. a script to check if the copy job is still running - you could extend this to check to see if any job is still running before shutting down.

[adrenaline_x]

Dell Idrac lets you control the servers over Racadm commands


I wonder if you could script the backup copy to remotely turn on the server - Pause, And then start the copy and then remotely shut it down.

It would he good if we could script it to ssh into the switch and disable the port on a switch as well before and after the copy but i would have reservations about sending sshs comands to a switch on a production switch..

hmm...

# power server off
racadm serveraction powerdown

# power server on
racadm serveraction powerup

# perform server power cycle
racadm serveraction powercycle

# force hard server power reset
racadm serveraction hardreset

# display current power status of server
racadm serveraction powerstatus