Today, industrial control system cybersecurity is mainly focused on securing networks, and efforts generally ignore process control equipment that is critical for plant safety and reliability, which leaves it woefully vulnerable.
As the number and severity of attacks on our critical infrastructure continue to grow, there are few genuine experts that properly deal with the challenges of industrial controls security.
Alvaka’s friend and partner, Joe Weiss of Control Global, is an expert in the fight against attacks on our critical infrastructure systems. Joe was recently interviewed in the February 2019 issue of Power magazine. The article, “A Grim Gap: Cybersecurity of Level 1 Field Devices,” is largely an interview with Joe on the fundamental lack of cyber security in process sensors, actuators, and drives – Level 1 field devices. Among other things, the interview also discusses the term “Operational Technology” (OT) and what it does and does not cover.
For more from Joe, you can also go to his blog HERE.
For help with your infrastructure security challenges, contact Alvaka to discuss the right solutions for your needs.
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.