Should I buy cyber insurance?
A friend of mine asked me if he should buy cyber insurance for his business. Whether your need is for a self-hosted/owned, cloud or hybrid infrastructure this is not an easy answer. As I thought about it, I decided this is probably a topic of interest to many financial managers at small to mid-size enterprises. How should you decide this question and who can you seek for legitimate counsel that is qualified to answer this question without having a conflict of interest?
GDPR for California: AB 375 – California’s Consumer Privacy Protection Act
On July 25, 2018, the State of California passed AB 375. This bill mandates the nation’s most comprehensive privacy rights for consumers. Many of you have read about the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the European Union’s approach to [...]
Steps for an Effective Cybersecurity Incident Response Plan
Written by Kevin McDonald, COO and CISO of Alvaka Networks. Originally published January 2016 on TechTarget. Kevin discusses steps to help you prepare a cybersecurity incident response. When your system is compromised, you generally have one chance to get the response [...]
How Does GDPR Affect Companies Doing Business in California?
Most people received updated privacy notices from several websites they frequently visit over the last several weeks, but very few know why they received them. Most of it was prompted by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), that was approved [...]
Six of the Most Dreaded IT Projects
Written by Dan Tynan (Writer, Editor, and Consultant). Originally posted on CIO.com on June 25, 2018. Alvaka Networks CEO, Oli Thordarson, and CTO, Unnar Gardarsson, contribute to this discussion on what projects IT professionals dread the most. The projects that most IT [...]
Companies risk being held ‘hostage’ by IT without proper IT process documentation
Written by Kevin McDonald, Alvaka Networks. Originally published April 2016 on TechTarget. Kevin discusses the crucial role of IT Process Documentation. It seems that not a day passes without news of another high-profile hack, embezzlement of monies and data, or even [...]
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.
