A.I. Generated Illustration

It will catch you off guard! As a podcaster, the worst thing can happen when we face the nightmare of losing all our podcast audio files. It will and does happen to all podcasters at some point. It is dangerous to think that it could never happen to you. It hits you hard after you work so hard to bring your production to life, to see it all go away in the blink of an eye. I have had it happen to me a few times now, and even when you think you have a solid plan, devastation strikes from the least expected place.

The protection of your work is always dependent on how well you prepare for devastation. Redundant backups of all of your work are the only true way of making sure that you have the files when something happens that might not be in your control. Imagine that you wake up from a great night’s sleep and you find yourself with a great morning cup of coffee sitting in front of your computer going over your morning emails and sticking out like a sore thumb is an email from your podcast hosting provider that read as follows.

Hi Ed,

The team has restored the system to working order. However, as noted below, the hacking incident impacted the existing audio files. The path forward to restore your podcast to working order is to re-upload the audio files.

Click here for instructions.

We are happy to assist in the upload process. As your audio files are likely too large to share via email, you can share them via your preferred service (DropBox, Google Drive, etc.) by sending a link to hi@******.com. If you’d like our team to upload your audio, please ensure the episodes are named in a manner that we can recognize the Season, Episode Number, and Name.

We know this is not an ideal situation, but it is currently our best option.

Thank you again for your support and understanding,

The ****** Team

—

We wanted to reach out and let you know what we’ve learned since Saturday’s system outage. What we originally thought was a server error due to the release of new ******Studio features turned out to not be the case. It was discovered that hackers found a vulnerability in AWS and managed to access a component of the server where audio files are stored. A password was added to both the main and backup servers with a request for ransom.

The good news is that no personal information was breached, as this is stored in a different server location than the podcast audio files. There was also no loss of ****** Connect user data.

The bad news is that our podcast audio files have been rendered inaccessible. If you are creating a new podcast, you will experience no issues. We are working to update the Replace Audio feature so you can re-upload the audio files from your local device to your current podcast. We are trying to complete this as soon as possible, and hope to have this available today.

Both Amazon and the FBI are involved in this effort.

Click here to watch a brief video update from our CEO and Founder,*****.

We will share another update as soon as possible. We know how upsetting this is, and our full team is working around the clock to get everything back in working order.

Thank you for your patience,

The ****** Team

It can be devastating for a podcaster who might be new to the podcasting space. You must always have your files ready to fight back against such an attack. I have all of my files in a structure that allows me easy access to restoring all of my creations. This also includes the episode artwork and all of your show notes. Any thing that you put out as a creator I suggest that you have everything backed up in at least 3 different locations, this includes an online backup source. 

A.I. Generated Illustration

Save yourself from major upsets and keep your spirit on a higher level knowing that you have your files in a secure location in case of any type of devastation that might be avoided. Because you have chosen the path of preparation you will find yourself with a lot more time for yourself and other things that might need your attention. 

Have a good plan and structure when you are saving your work so it will be easier when devastation hits!