Kevin McDonald has just published his latest article of DFARS (Defense Federal Acquisition Regulations Supplement) at SearchCompliance.TechTarget.com.
If you fall into this category, a recently implemented rule from the Department of Defense called the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) 252.204-7012 will impact how you handle controlled unclassified information (CUI).
Kevin writes to the important issue that is certain to impact contractors’ revenues. Compliance here is certain to make for new winners and losers in the defense contracting space. Which side you land on will depend largely where you fall this year with regards to DFARS compliance.
Read Kevin’s full story here – DFARS compliance targets ‘controlled unclassified information’
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.