Each year the total ransomware cases and money demanded, either through bitcoin or other monetary means, increases. Attacks can cost businesses and governments millions of dollars in recovery fees, and the enormous payout is why the ransomware industry is so [...]
Kevin McDonald, COO, and CISO at Alvaka Networks gives insight to the largest threat that individuals and businesses face in today’s cyberspace. That threat is ransomware. The number of ransomware attacks has been significantly increasing over the past few years [...]
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 [...]
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. [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
In the below video, Alvaka CEO Oli Thordarson, discusses Alvaka's response and readiness to the Covid-19 Pandemic and how we are supporting our clients' response efforts with consistent and quality service. Here is a script of the video... [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Cyberattacks are becoming an increasing risk for SMB owners. Unfortunately, the majority think they are immune to these attacks and continue using free cybersecurity software. It’s only when it becomes too late, and when the company is already victimized by [...]
Smoke testing is a term used to describe the testing process for servers after patches are applied. The process typically involves making sure servers are rebooted in the right order, making sure they have completely rebooted, restarting applications in the right order, and then testing to be certain everything is working properly when users return to work in the morning.
This typically takes 30 minutes per server, depending upon your environment.
PCs are not typically smoke tested, or if so, not all of them.
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.
There are many variables to consider. Some are:
You want to enter in a fully burdened labor rate for this field. What that means is that you want to take the base hourly rate, plus 25-30% for employer payroll taxes, benefits, vacation/holiday time, etc.
For example, someone making $80,000 per year will typically work 52 weeks of 40 hours, or 2080 hours. $80,000 divided by 2080 is $38.46/hour. Multiply that hourly rate by 1.3, and you get $50.00/hour. Of course, rates of pay, taxes and benefits will vary from city, state and company; but 30% is usually a good number to use. Don’t forget to account for time-and-a-half or after-hours rates of pay if patching is being done in the late evening, early morning, or weekends (in order to avoid impacting user productivity).
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.
If you are presenting to management for a budget, and using this calculator as the basis for a Return on Investment (ROI), you will need to do more homework. An ROI measures as a ratio of the cost of investment against its expected benefit. For patching, calculating benefit can be very difficult to determine. How do you measure the cost of a system breach you have not yet had? You can estimate what expenses, penalties, and losses a company might incur when a breach occurs; but there is no certainty of a breach event and what those costs actually are. There are also regulatory compliance issues and/or potential fines for not patching, but those, too, can be vague. For calculating these potential risks and costs, it is advisable to enter into a discussion with your management team.