What does a FIPS 199 impact assessment mean to you?
If you are a subcontractor to a prime defense contractor like Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Boeing, General Dynamics and others, you need to know about FIPS 199 and why doing a FIPS impact assessment is important to your DFARS [...]
How information technology advisory groups can benefit organizations
By Kevin McDonald In today's cyber environment, many public safety organizations struggle to advance their technology and maintain security. Many departments would love to seek out efficiencies through advanced, cost-saving technology. They know they must improve their cybersecurity and operating efficiency. [...]
Despite the warnings, corporate cyber defenses remain inadequate
Following WannaCry, how should businesses protect themselves from cyberattacks? If anything, 2017 will be remembered as the year of the cyber-attack. No business is safe. No industry is exempt. The ease with which cyber-attacks can be launched and virally propagated [...]
What is DevOps and why is it important?
I was just reading a critical assessment today of Alvaka Networks’ website, and how we position our company in our messaging. There is considerable talk in the assessment about the application economy and DevOps, and how Alvaka is not messaging [...]
S.770 – MAIN STREET Cybersecurity Act of 2017 has passed the Senate vote
There is pending cybersecurity legislation that looks like it will affect almost every company on Main Street. It is known as the S.770 - MAIN STREET Cybersecurity Act of 2017. What is S.770? It is a law designed to help [...]
New password guidelines from the US federal government via NIST
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has issued new guidelines regarding secure passwords. Who is NIST? NIST is a non-regulatory federal agency whose purpose is to promote U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by [...]
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.
