Kevin McDonald writes for TechTarget SearchCompliance on Aligning IT and compliance procedures increasingly a business priority.
He says, “When I’ve asked IT pros about HIPAA Security Rule compliance within their organization, they’ve typically responded with, “That is the compliance officer’s realm” or “Risk handles compliance.” If you ask executives about the IT functions required under the Security Rule, you will very often get, “The IT folks assure us they follow industry security best practices.” Or “I have no idea what they do; it is all Greek to me.”
IT personnel — and executives — often have too much trust that someone else is taking care of compliance. They’re also often all too willing to remain ignorant of any IT-specific issue that might be even slightly outside their domain.”
Read the full story here – Aligning IT and compliance procedures increasingly a business priority.

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.
Smoke testing is a type of software testing performed by Alvaka after a software patching sequence to ensure that the system is working correctly and to identify any misconfigurations or conflicts within the patched system.
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.
Smoke testing is a term used to describe the testing process for servers after patches are applied.