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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 [...]
When is the driverless car arriving for you?
All electric and self-driving car technology fascinates me. As a race car driver, I can see that we are not too far away from the time where the computers and software will lap the car faster and better [...]
We got your picture even without a microwave
his is a picture laden blog. There might even be a picture of you. We had our Open House on March 9th and I can’t be more proud. Kristian, Sara, Bernice and Teresa did a fantastic job promoting and organizing the event. The office looks great. We beat our attendance target. What surprised me the most was the energy at the event and how long people stayed to network, chat and learn about new stuff.
Here are some fun pictures. Some are a bit sentimental for me.
A sentimental photo, here we have Juan Lopez (a 20+ year veteran of Alvaka Networks), Yvonne Clemens (a 20+ year client of Alvaka Networks), and Rex Frank our first service manager and now an industry icon in what else… service management.
CRN’s story on the CIA Wikileaks leak
Partners Say Alleged CIA Hacking Papers Prompt 'Constant Vigilance' In Mobile Security In its news release on the so-called "Vault 7" documents, WikiLeaks describes a specialty CIA unit that develops malware to "infest, control and exfiltrate data" from iPhones as [...]
The latest trends in government contracting
Los Angeles, CA - 2017 is going to be highlighted as a banner year for some DoD related contractors, and a sad downturn for others. Why? DFARS 252.204-7012 is going to define new winners and losers in defense contracting. Within [...]
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.
