Cybercrime: Non-personal and potentially deadly
Written by Oli Thordarson, President/CEO of Alvaka Networks Mimi Grant, President of ABL Organization, wrote to me asking if a recent Red Cross plea to cyber-criminals to not attack hospitals with ransomware and extortion will help reduce cybercrime activity. She [...]
What to Expect During a Ransomware Recovery
Are you a victim of ransomware? Or have you been one in the past? If so, the following will help you understand what activities you should expect during the course of your ransomware recovery in the days following an attack. [...]
Is Your Business Prepared for Remote Work? Take a Readiness Self-Assessment
As COVID-19 (Coronavirus) continues to disrupt and create uncertainty in our daily lives and business, Alvaka Networks wants to focus on helping companies keep their employees, community, and businesses safe by educating and assisting in remote work strategies. Alvaka continually [...]
New York Aims to Prevent Cities from Paying Ransomware Demands
If Senator Boyle and cosponsors—Senator George M. Borrello of the 57th Senate District and Senator Sue Serino of the 41st Senate District—get their way, municipalities in New York will be banned from paying ransomware demands to get their vital public [...]
Protecting your Backups in a Ransomware World
I just read an article that is full of great information on protecting your backups from a ransomware attack. The article states what I have long said, you must practice security in layers. No one tool or solution is going [...]
Ransomware recovery at Las Vegas casinos
We have been involved in a lot of different ransomware rescues. Here is a new one, gambling casinos. Yes, it turns out some casinos are just as vulnerable as the rest of the business population. Even some of the casinos with [...]
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.
