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HIPAA, HITECH and the challenges of a ‘business associate’. A podcast interview with Alvaka EVP and Director of Compliance Practices, Kevin McDonald
If you're working with a covered entity's customers on HIPAA security compliance, you are considered a "business associate" under the HITECH Act.
MSPmentor Live webcast of 2010
Our first MSPmentor Live webcast of 2010 is scheduled for January 20. Our guest speakers — representing three top managed service providers and Nimsoft — will cover key questions for growth-oriented small, midsize and large MSPs. Here’s a closer look at the webcast.
IT Services Hiring a Bright Spot in Jobs Report
While companies in general continue to limit their hiring internally, the Department of Labor report shows that they are turning to outside contractors, solution providers and MSPs for their technology needs.
Top five IT channel lessons for the quarter
Barbara Darrow, channel advisory board, Google, IT channel products and technologies, Microsoft, Oracle, public cloud, Sun VARs remain extremely cautious on public cloud computing and are obsessed with which vendor giants will remain standing after more expected M&A activity.
Alvaka Interview with LA Times on Laws Impacting Web Businesses(Los Angeles Times)
Question: I've heard that most business laws are designed to regulate large corporations. I have a small online business. What laws do I need to be aware of?
Maintaining your customers’ security amid layoffs
The down economy means many of your customer companies are going to go through layoffs. Kevin McDonald explains why and how to maintain your customers' security amid layoffs, and what the consequences are if you do not.
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.