Alvaka Networks COO/CISO Kevin McDonald is a featured author in this month’s CAPG Health magazine. He writes about the obligations under HIPAA and HITECH to protect health information and how failure to do so can cost $359 per record breached. He goes on to outline 15 steps you can take to better safeguard your PHI. Click HERE for “Kevin’s column in CAPG Heath Magazine.
CAPG is the largest association in the country representing physician organizations practicing capitated, coordinated care. CAPG members include approximately 190 multispecialty medical groups and independent practice associations (IPAs) across 38 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.
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.