Mr. Nichols has over 25 years of experience in the Information Security and Healthcare Technology industries. Mr. Nichols leads the Global Product Security program at Danaher Corporation, representing over 30 companies, including 4 medical device manufactures and 8 life sciences companies. Focusing on security by design for Danaher’s medical devices, diagnostics, life sciences, water quality, environmental and applied solutions product portfolios. Mr. Nichols is the chairman for the Danaher Global Product Security Council and serves on the steering committee for the Medical Device Innovation Consortium (MDIC). He is a certified healthcare information security and privacy practitioner (HCISPP) and a certified HIPAA privacy security expert (CHPSE).
Joe Stangarone on Nine Common Enterprise Cybersecurity Myths
I like to read mrc's Cup of Joe Blog by Joe Stangarone. This week I had the honor of being part of his blog 9 common enterprise cybersecurity myths. This week Joe gets insightful commentary from nine experts to bust some of [...]
Eight Reasons You Feel Like a Hostage to IT
Over the years we have seen many new clients come to Alvaka Networks feeling like they are hostages to Information Technology. IT Hostages feel this way for many different reasons. Most often the person feeling this way is the CFO, Controller, CEO, COO, IT manager or an IT technician for the most part in that order in terms of frequency.
Why do you feel that way?
Multimedia Just Got a New Life and a New Jump-Off-the-Page Twist
I love technology for its constant change and innovation. Today I learned about a new technology that blends with traditional print to blow my mind. I am sure it will do so for you, too. That technology is called Print2life. The technology let’s an advertiser create a traditional print ad for a magazine, newspaper, direct mail piece, door hanger, product label, etc. But with Print2life technology you can hold your phone over the advertising image and scan the print advertisement. After a couple of seconds the advertisement pops up on your...
Purpose, Mastery and Autonomy in Managing IT Infrastructure
I love Daniel Pink’s writings. I thought I would share this article from SmartCompany.com. The message about Purpose, Mastery and Autonomy I reread from time to time. The message is short, but it rings so true for me. The most [...]
Software Patching Best Practices – 18 Must Do Tips
There are many other benefits to applying software patches including in some cases adding features, fixing bugs that make the software run slow or not work right. All software needs to be patched. Whether the software sits on a disk and runs on a server, resides on a chip within a firewall, or is an app that is in your tablet devices, it all needs to periodically be updated and patched in order to be secure.
The following list of 18 software patching best practices is what we follow at Alvaka Networks when delivering on our Patchworx(SM) Patch Management Service. It is important to note that all these steps are important, but not always are all them utilized or they can be utilized in different ways depending upon the needs of the client. Like us, you will need to decide what your patch management plan needs to look like to best suit your needs.
18 recommended best practices for patching your software:
Why are Patch Management and Change Management Important?
Alvaka Networks has arguably the best and most sophisticated patch management process in the Orange County, Los Angeles County and possibly the US. Not many firms can deploy vast quantities of patches to valuable high availability servers and PCs with smoke testing qualify control while following the sun globally during selected narrow service windows.
Change Management
Change management is vital to every stage of the patch management process. As with all system modifications, patches and updates must be performed and tracked through the change management system. It is highly unlikely that an enterprise-scale patch management program can be successful without proper integration with the change management system and organization.
Like any environmental changes, patch application plans submitted through change management must have associated contingency and backout plans. What are the recovery plans if something goes wrong during or as a result of the application of a patch or update? Also, information on risk mitigation should be included in the change management solution. For example, how are desktop patches going to be phased and scheduled to prevent mass outages and support desk overload? Monitoring and acceptance plans should also be included in the change management process. How will updates be certified as successful? There should be specific milestones and acceptance criteria to guide the verification of the patches' success and to allow for the closure of the update in the change management system....
40% of Hospitals Self-Declared as Struggling Financially Due to IT Problems
“94% of the surveyed hospital CFOs self-identified as “struggling”, report that delayed or failed implementations in other IT systems, particularly EHR, have drastically impacted the organization’s financial position.”
That is what is says in the third sentence of a fascinating press release I just read from healthcare market research firm Black Book Market Research. The press release goes on to cite a number of other statistics from their research including stats that many healthcare CFOs are expecting to lose their jobs by 2016 and that there will be a trend to start hiring CEOs from outside healthcare.
I have witnessed some of the reasons for the IT troubles at healthcare companies:
· Healthcare companies on the whole have been laggards in adoption of fresh information technologies.
· IT personnel at most healthcare organizations themselves are behind the curve on...
How Easily Could the Sony Breach Have Been Prevented?
Check out this short video of Jonathan Sandler of STEALTHbits talking about how their technology would very likely have kept Sony out of the headlines.
Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas a Happy New Year to All of You
Thank you so much for all your support in 2014. We are already planning for 2015. Many of you may have already gotten calls from me as I contact you to get feedback on a set of 10 questions I [...]
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.