As cybersecurity breaches surge, it’s important that company leadership know what IT is up to. Kevin McDonald explains why IT process documentation is a must-have best practice.
It seems that not a day passes without news of another high-profile hack, embezzlement of monies and data, or even the sabotage of a corporation or government entity. These events are shining a light on weak efforts to avoid cybersecurity breaches, and how company owners and executives are sometimes targeted for shareholder revenge. As Zurich Insurance Group reported in 2014, “Shareholders within several companies recently victimized by cybersecurity breaches have launched lawsuits against the enterprises’ boards, claiming that executive management breached its fiduciary duty by failing to ensure that the companies implemented adequate security measures.”
As an executive, meeting your fiduciary responsibilities with regard to technology decisions and preventing cybersecurity breaches can be extremely difficult. In fact, without the honest…
Read the full story by Kevin McDonald here TechTarget SearchCIO at Without IT process documentation, companies risk being held ‘hostage’ by IT
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.