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Are You at Risk with the Government for Sloppy Cybersecurity?
Court: FTC can bring down the hammer on companies with sloppy cybersecurity Hotel chain Wyndham had challenged the FTC's authority to mandate cybersecurity standards The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has the authority to take action against companies that fail to [...]
Oli Thordarson and The VAR Guy on “Cyberthreats: Worse Than Anyone Thinks”
The potential for a cyberattack is top of mind for not just IT professionals and CIOs but also among the general population. Experts—from government agencies to technology experts—have been warning that this year will see the worst cyber breaches in [...]
Interview with Oli on Effective IT Management
Our CEO, Oli Thordarson, shares how we provide effective Managed IT services here at Alvaka and explains the different tools that we use to keep our client's operations in check good running condition.
Future Posts
Follow Kevin's future blogging at www.noloki.com
CryptoLocker Critical Security Alert
Critical Security Alert Please be advised that Alvaka Networks is notifying it's clients and partners of a particularly malicious and destructive form of malware or “Ransomware” referred to as CryptoLocker. Whereas the vast majority of malware is written [...]
Are You Hip To HIPAA 3.0 HITECH And The Omnibus Rule?
The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) released a new rule on Jan. 17 to protect patient privacy and secure health information established under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) and run by The [...]
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.