…Under the Final Rule, the OCR has the power to domestically deal out civil penalties, corrective actions and long-term monitoring, while the DOJ has the power to domestically deliver a criminal prosecution. Through enforcement under HITECH, the State attorneys general also have the power to cause pain to U.S.-based companies, because the attorneys general are empowered to bring civil actions in federal district courts for state residents who have been damaged or whose rights were violated by information breaches
Read the full column here: Unclear HIPAA rules permit healthcare data offshoring … for now
Smoke testing is a term used to describe the testing process for servers after patches are applied. 
Estimating an average time for patching servers and PCs can be a bit tricky. It can vary from one month to the next, depending upon the number and complexity of the patches released by your software vendors. You must consider all versions of operating systems and have a complete inventory of all your application software to do this job correctly. Our experience has shown that manual patching of systems takes on average of about 1.5 hours each.
This is a basic cost calculator for you to compute your typical monthly cost for patching your servers, PCs, laptops, tablets and associated application software. It also forms the basis for you to begin calculating your Return on Investment for software patching, or for comparison with alternatives to the manual process of patching operating systems and application software—such as Patch Management as a Service, also known as Vulnerability Management as a Service.