I wrote a short blog on some of the changes that were instituted by the passage of ARRA and it incorporated HITECH provisions. If you follow the link at the bottom of this entry, you can go to an interview that I did with Search Security on the subject of VARs and Business Associates. “In this edition of “Patrolling the Channel,” see why the designation of “business associate” has given McDonald additional compliance challenges. The executive VP talks about the technical and non-technical controls being implemented for HIPAA’s sake. He also shares why he thinks solution providers may be behind the curve when it comes to compliance with the healthcare regulation.”
At Alvaka we go through great efforts and independent certification and testing of our systems and processes to assure our clients that we practice what we preach. HIPAA does not need to be a nightmare, but it is no joke either.
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.