Policy Compliance Library Updates, April 2020

Qualys’ library of built-in policies makes it easy to comply with the security standards and regulations that are most commonly used and adhered to. Qualys provides a wide range of policies, including many that have been certified by CIS as well as the ones based on security guidelines from OS an...

Qualys Cloud Platform 3.0 New Features

This release of the Qualys Cloud Platform version 3.0 includes updates and new features for Vulnerability Management, highlights as follows. Vulnerability Management The following features apply to all subscriptions that are currently using the Vulnerability Management Dashboard beta. With this...

Qualys Cloud Platform: Continuity of Service in Response to COVID-19

I would like to share Qualys' response to the heightening coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak and outline the steps we are taking to ensure continuity of service for our customers and also ensure the health and well-being of our employees. Qualys has a comprehensive business continuity and emergency...

Policy Compliance Library Updates, December 2019

Qualys’ library of built-in policies makes it easy to comply with the security standards and regulations that are most commonly used and adhered to. Qualys provides a wide range of policies, including many that have been certified by CIS as well as the ones based on security guidelines from OS an...

Qualys Policy Compliance Notification: Policy Library Update

Qualys’ library of built-in policies makes it easy to comply with the security standards and regulations that are most commonly used and adhered to. Qualys provides a wide range of policies, including many that have been certified by CIS as well as the ones based on security guidelines from vendo...

Microsoft and Adobe Patch Tuesday, December 2024 Security Update Review

Closing out 2024, Microsoft’s December Patch Tuesday highlights the importance of year-end maintenance with updates tackling critical vulnerabilities. As cyber threats remain persistent, these patches serve as a vital reminder of the ongoing need for robust system security. Microsoft Patch Tuesda...

Top MITRE ATT&CK Tactics and Techniques Leveraged in 2023

The Qualys Threat Research Unit has mapped vulnerabilities and misconfigurations to the MITRE ATT&CK framework tactics and techniques to help you get the attacker’s view. They have also analyzed vulnerabilities and misconfigurations across all our customers to find the top tactics and techniques...

Real-Time Defense of Multi-Cloud Environments From Malicious Attacks and Threats

Organizations today cannot detect real-time threats at runtime due to the multi-cloud infrastructure, resulting in the possibility of malicious actors exploiting the environment. It is imperative for the modern organization to have a solution to detect advanced run-time threats in real-time to...

Implement Risk-Based Vulnerability Management with Qualys TruRisk™ : Part 1

For today’s CISOs, managing cyber risk is Job 1 priority, and it’s a full-time concern. Security practitioners are spending a considerable amount of time responding to cybersecurity threats and finding ways to reduce risk from threats that are unknown. Earlier this year Qualys introduced Qualys...

Let Smart Automation Reduce the Risk of Zero-Day Attacks on Third-Party Applications

Last week, Google released yet another zero-day patch for its Chrome browser to fix a high-severity flaw that was already being exploited. That vulnerability CVE-2022-3075 is the sixth actively exploited zero-day found in Chrome this year. While users are grateful for the urgent patch, it was...

New Qualys Research Report: Evolution of Quasar RAT

The Qualys Threat Research Team continues to inform enterprise cybersecurity teams of emerging threats that could impact their business. These threat intelligence reports summarize individual threat exploits and provide practical recommendations for protecting against them. In this free research...

Catching the RAT called Agent Tesla

For the last few years, the Qualys Research Team has been observing an infamous "Malware-as-a-service" RAT Remote Access Trojan called Agent Tesla. It first appeared in 2014, and since then many variants have been deployed. This malware uses multiple techniques for evading detection as well as...

Qualys Cloud Platform 10.1.0 New Features

The upcoming release of the Qualys Cloud Platform VM, PC, version 10.1.0, includes several new features and enhancements in Qualys Cloud Platform and Qualys Policy Compliance. This release will also add support for new technologies in Qualys Policy Compliance for OCA. 10.1.0 is scheduled to go li...

Countdown to Black Hat: Top 10 Sessions to Attend — #9 and #10

With Black Hat USA 2019 now in progress, we wrap up this blog series with our final two session recommendations: Attacking and Defending the Microsoft Cloud and Practical Approach to Automate the Discovery and Eradication of Open-Source Software Vulnerabilities at Scale. Attacking and Defending t...

When Preparing for GDPR, Don’t Neglect Public Cloud Security

With organizations aggressively moving workloads to public cloud platforms, such as Amazon’s AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft’s Azure, protecting these environments is critical for compliance with the EU's General Data Protection Regulation GDPR. These public cloud platforms are being used to pow...

Inside the 2026 Verizon DBIR: What One Billion Records Revealed About Vulnerability Remediation

The Verizon 2026 Data Breach Investigations Report has been published. Qualys is proud to have served as a research partner and contributor, contributing analysis of more than one billion anonymized vulnerability remediation records across four consecutive DBIR reporting cycles of CISA Known...

Don’t Wait for a Patch. Mitigate RedSun Zero-Day Risk in Microsoft Defender Today

Key Takeaways RedSun is a critical zero-day vulnerability in Microsoft Defender that allows low-privileged users to gain SYSTEM access No patch is currently available, leaving all Defender-enabled Windows systems potentially exposed Qualys VMDR detects affected assets instantly QID 92382 TruRisk...

Microsoft and Adobe Patch Tuesday, February 2026 Security Update Review

Microsoft's February 2026 Patch Tuesday focuses on closing security gaps that attackers could exploit, reinforcing the importance of timely patching in enterprise environments. Here's a quick breakdown of what you need to know. Microsoft Patch Tuesday for February 2026 This month's release...

Part III: Implementing Effective Cyber Security Metrics that Reduce Risk Realistically

We outlined some critical cybersecurity metrics in Part I of this three-part blog series. In the final blog post, we will delve into three crucial aspects outlined in Josh’s article: tactical metrics for operational teams, strategic metrics for leadership, and the metrics addressing the...

How to Quickly Prioritize Risks with VMDR 2.0 and Orchestrate Response with CMDB & ITSM Integration

A single source of truth for asset inventory enables Cybersecurity and IT teams to optimally automate risk prioritization and response. Qualys VMDR 2.0 with TruRiskTM leverages Qualys CSAM to automate the Asset Criticality Score, a key parameter of risk scoring. This blog explains how with insigh...

Auto-Discover and Secure Middleware Instances in Your Environment

Enterprise middleware plays a critical role in bringing together many moving parts within an organization, ensuring efficient collaboration, seamless integration and interoperability. A systematic evaluation of middleware architectures is important to thoroughly assess the overall security and...

Qualys Adds Cloud Agent Linux Support for AWS ARM-Based EC2 Instances

Releasing this week May 26, 2020, Qualys adds Cloud Agent Linux support for Amazon Web Services EC2 instances powered by ARM processors including the new Graviton2 processor. AWS Graviton2 processors power Amazon EC2 M6g, C6g, and R6g instances that provide up to 40% better price performance over...

Automated and Scalable Audit Workflows with Qualys Security Assessment Questionnaire

Risk and compliance management is a multi-faceted domain with concentrated endeavors towards reducing unacceptable risk potential that could disrupt business, or otherwise negatively impact business performance. IT GRC Governance, Risk and Compliance comprises many tasks related to business and I...

Policy Compliance Library Updates, March 2020

Qualys’ library of built-in policies makes it easy to comply with the security standards and regulations that are most commonly used and adhered to. Qualys provides a wide range of policies, including many that have been certified by CIS as well as the ones based on security guidelines from OS an...

Video Training Update, July 2019

The Qualys Training team released a major update to the Vulnerability Management Certified Training Course. We’ve also built out two new video libraries showing how to assess business process risk and how to secure cloud infrastructures in DevSecOps environments using AWS Golden AMI pipelines. An...

Qualys Cloud Platform (VM, PC) 8.18.2 New Features

This new release of the Qualys Cloud Platform, version 8.18.2.0, includes the new look for the App Picker, new technology support for Unix UDCs, and error code/text for errors that occur during control evaluation. Feature Highlights Qualys Cloud Platform The App Picker has a new look – The apps i...

Qualys VMDR and TotalCloud™ Now Available on Oracle Cloud Marketplace

Key Takeaways Qualys VMDR and TotalCloud are now available on the Oracle Cloud Marketplace, simplifying procurement and deployment for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure OCI customers. Organizations can deploy security faster with native OCI integration and one-click provisioning. The combined platform...

ShadyPanda: The Silent Browser Takeover Threat and How Qualys TruRisk Eliminate Helps You Stop It

Executive Summary ShadyPanda has exploited trusted browser extensions to compromise millions of users, illustrating how legitimate software can unexpectedly become harmful. Qualys TruRisk Eliminate empowers organizations to identify risky behaviors, prioritize real threats, and eliminate maliciou...

Qualys Enterprise TruRisk™ Platform Extends FIM with Real-Time Monitoring of Unauthorized Access to Sensitive Data and Configuration Change Detection on Network Devices

Introducing FIM 4.0 with File Access Monitoring FAM and Agentless FIM to ensure compliance with the new PCI 4.0 File Integrity Monitoring FIM solutions are essential for virtually any organization to help identify suspicious activities across critical system files and registries, diagnose changes...

Qualys Launches MSSP Portal to Empower Managed Security Service Providers

In the words of Sun Tzu, In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity. This aptly captures the essence of todays cybersecurity landscape. Managed Security Service Providers MSSPs stand at the forefront, turning chaos into opportunity by securing digital assets across the entire infrastructure...

Latest Trend in Mac Vulnerabilities and How to Efficiently Address Them

Usually, every September/October, Apple releases its updated OSes and, with them, a set of new CVEs. This month was no different. In fact, if we look at 2023, Qualys released on average 32 new QIDs every month for MacOs and its 3rd-party products see figure below: Fig 1. Mac Vulns 2023 In the pas...

Risk Fact #3: External-Facing Vulnerabilities Cloud Security Research Risk Fact

Qualys Blog Series – 2023 TotalCloud Security Insights by the Threat Research Unit The 2023 TotalCloud Security Insights report from the Qualys Threat Research Unit TRU provides research insights, best practices, and detailed recommendations organized by five separate Risk Facts. The insights wil...

Award-winning Qualys Vulnerability and Compliance Solution now available on IBM zSystems & LinuxONE

Todays modern IBM mainframe is central to hybrid cloud environments, valued by two-thirds of the Fortune 100 as a highly secured platform for running mission-critical workloads. Not surprisingly, according to a recent IBM commissioned study by Celent, it is estimated that 70% of global bank cards...

Ursnif Malware Banks on News Events for Phishing Attacks

Ursnif aka Gozi, Dreambot, ISFB is one of the most widespread banking trojans. It has been observed evolving over the past few years. Ursnif has shown incredible theft capabilities. In 2020 Ursnif rose to prominence becoming one of the top ten most prolific pieces of malware. Among its core...

Unified SaaS Application Security, Detection, and Response

Organizations are rapidly embracing Software as a Service SaaS applications for scalability, ease & flexibility of use, and the benefits of not using their own infrastructure. To maintain their focus on business objectives during the new ‘remote workforce normalcy’, organizations have fast-tracke...

Qualys Cloud Platform 2.44 New Features

This release of the Qualys Cloud Platform version 2.44 includes updates and new features for Cloud Agent and Web Application Scanning, highlights as follows. Cloud Agent User Interface "License Overview" changing to "Activation Overview" on Dashboard – The references to License have been changed ...

Qualys Cloud Platform 2.40 New Features

This release of the Qualys Cloud Platform version 2.40 includes updates and new features for Web Application Scanning, highlights as follows. Web Application Scanning "Everything" Detection Scope – A new detection scope called "Everything" is now available in the option profile. This can be used ...

No More Tears: WannaCry Highlights Importance of Prompt Vulnerability Detection, Remediation

It didn’t have to happen. That’s the simple yet profound lesson from WannaCry’s ransomware rampage that has infected 300,000-plus systems in more than 150 countries, disrupting critical operations across industries, including healthcare, government, transportation and finance. If vulnerable syste...

Intel AMT Vulnerability

Last week, Intel published a security advisory INTEL-SA-00075 regarding a new vulnerability in Intel Active Management Technology AMT, Intel Standard Manageability ISM, and Intel Small Business Technology SBT. The firmware versions impacted are 6.x, 7.x, 8.x 9.x, 10.x, 11.0, 11.5, and 11.6. In...

Mutagen Astronomy: From Discovery to CISA Recognition—A Seven-Year Journey

Introduction On January 26, 2026,the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA added CVE-2018-14634 to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities KEV catalog. The same vulnerability was discovered by the Qualys Threat Research Unit TRU in September 2018. We nicknamed it "Mutagen Astronomy" a...

Key Insights from the NCSC’s Vulnerability Management Guidance

In a world increasingly surrounded by cyber threats, the UKs National Cyber Security Centre NCSC offers vital guidance on Vulnerability Management, providing clear and actionable advice for tackling cyber threats. Their recommendations are essential for organizations to understand and mitigate...

Unveiling the Deceptive Dance: Phobos Ransomware Masquerading As VX-Underground

During a recent hunt, Qualys Threat Research has come across a ransomware family known as Phobos, impersonating VX-Underground. Phobos ransomware has been knocking on our door since early 2019 and is often seen being distributed via stolen Remote Desktop Protocol RDP connections. Strongly believe...

QSC23 – Qualys Announces a Directional Shift to Measure, Communicate, and Eliminate Cyber Risk with New Platform and Solutions

The 2023 Qualys Security Conference QSC started wrapping up on Thursday, November 9th, with two days of new technology announcements, impactful customer use cases, and thought-provoking talks from a host of engaging speakers, including Rachel Wilson, Managing Director at Morgan Stanley and Frank...

Risk-based Vulnerability Management Combined With A Cyber Risk Management Platform

Recent insights from IDCs recent report, Worldwide Device Vulnerability Management Forecast, 2023–2027: Evolving Beyond Scanning Feb. 2023, provide a sobering look at the future of what cybersecurity stacks may look like in a few years. As the name suggests, this report took a deep dive into the...

A New Approach to Discover, Monitor, and Reduce Your Modern Web Attack Surface

Web applications reign the internet universe, but also bring new risks that let attackers poke holes in an ever-expanding attack surface. Stolen credentials have been the historical culprit. Recent analysis saw a spike in exploits targeting web applications directly through specially-crafted...

Attack Surface Management: a Critical Pillar of Cybersecurity Asset Management

In their recent Innovation Insight for Attack Surface Management report, Gartner calls Attack Surface Management or “ASM”, for short the first pillar in a broader Exposure Management strategy. According to Gartner, ASM addresses the questions: What does my organization look like from an attacker’...

Implications of Windows Subsystem for Linux for Adversaries & Defenders (Part 1)

This post is the first of a multi-part blog series that will explore and highlight the different risks that Windows Subsystem for Linux WSL poses to an enterprise IT environment. Here we examine a new Microsoft feature for GNU\Linux that increases the attack surface and introduces a lot more...

Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report 2020

One of the most respected publications in cybersecurity is the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report DBIR, analyzing over 150,000 incidents and providing a comprehensive analysis covering the 32,002 incidents and 3950 breaches that meet Verizon's quality standards. I liked very much how they...

Anatomy of a Silent Domain Takeover

Key Takeaways Modern AD attacks use legitimate protocols end-to-end, no malware, no exploit, nothing for signature tools to fingerprint. The evidence is already in the logs; what is missing is the narrative linking five benign-looking Windows events into a single attack. A full domain takeover ca...

Advancing Cybersecurity in the Age of Frontier AI: Qualys Steps into Project Glasswing

The cybersecurity industry has spent much of the last two years debating how attackers might use AI. That debate matters, but it misses a larger point: defenders now have an opportunity to change the economics of cyber risk. For me, the question is not whether AI will influence cybersecurity. It...