1508, 2008
Is Public Sector IT Spending In For Tough Sledding?
It's the best of times. It's the worst of times.
That sums up the outlook for state, local and education (SLED) public-sector IT spending as many states struggle with falling tax revenues and growing budget deficits. But the spending patterns are definitely mixed. States riding high on record energy and natural resource prices have largely escaped the growing economic malaise that has hammered regions hit hardest by the housing and credit crises.
2103, 2008
State Department workers ignored passport data access warnings
Computerworld - WASHINGTON — The contract workers at the U.S. Department of State who viewed the passport records of U.S. Sen. Barack Obama ignored privacy warnings built into the agency's systems that the information could only be accessed on a "need-to-know" basis.
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.