Achieving DORA Compliance with Qualys: A Comprehensive Approach

In the ever-changing landscape of finance and technology, it is crucial to have robust operational resilience and compliance frameworks. The Digital Operational Resilience Act DORA framework is a significant step in this direction, as it is intended to strengthen the resilience of financial...

PCI DSS 4.0 FIM Requirements Simplified with Qualys File Integrity Monitoring

File Integrity Monitoring FIM is one of the essential requirements under PCI DSS 4.0. It helps organizations detect and respond to unauthorized changes in critical system files, configuration files, or content files, which is crucial for maintaining the security of cardholder data. Organizations...

CVE-2023-4911: Looney Tunables – Local Privilege Escalation in the glibc’s ld.so

The Qualys Threat Research Unit TRU has discovered a buffer overflow vulnerability in GNU C Librarys dynamic loaders processing of the GLIBCTUNABLES environment variable. We have successfully identified and exploited this vulnerability a local privilege escalation that grants full root privileges...

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...

Qualys Named a Market Leader in GigaOm Radar Report for Application Security Testing

Qualys Web Application Scanning WAS has been named a leader in the GigaOm Radar Report for Application Security Testing, 2023. Web app security is critical for every organization, for attacks on this vector caused 25% of breaches, according to the Verizon 2023 Data Breach Investigations Report. T...

Mitigating Risk with Custom First-Party Software and Application Components: A CISOs’ Guide

What is First-Party Software Anyway? First-party software, unlike off-the-shelf ‘Third-Party’ software, is custom open-source software OSS and applications created by organizations to stitch together existing software to meet custom business needs. Nearly every company today uses some form of...

Qualys Survey of Top 10 Exploited Vulnerabilities in 2023

The Qualys Threat Research Unit TRU has thoroughly analyzed vulnerabilities reported in 2023. Our comprehensive study assesses factors including weaponization status, existence in the CISA KEV, instances or usage of malware and ransomware, trending vulnerabilities, various scoring metrics, and...

The MGM Cybersecurity Breach: Learnings and Prevention Measures

As many are aware, the systems of the $14 billion dollar gaming and hospitality giant MGM have been brought to a halt for nearly 5 days due to a multi-vector attack that has come to affect Caesars Entertainment as well. While the culprits of the attack are not confirmed, hacking group Scattered...

Qualys Is the Outperformer in the New GigaOm Radar Report for Continuous Vulnerability Management

GigaOm has unveiled its third-annual Radar for Continuous Vulnerability Management featuring Qualys. In this Report, GigaOm provides a detailed analysis of the value and progression of vulnerability management VM capabilities to help organizations build the best security and vulnerability...

Microsoft and Adobe Patch Tuesday, September 2023 Security Update Review

Microsoft has released the Patch Tuesday edition for September. This months updates have addressed 66 security vulnerabilities including Edge Chromium-based in multiple products, features, and roles. Microsoft Patch Tuesday for September 2023 Microsoft has addressed two zero-day publicly exploite...

Risk Fact #5: Keeping the Pace of Remediation at Cloud Scale Requires Automation

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...

Qualys Top 20 Most Exploited Vulnerabilities

The earlier blog posts showcased an overview of the vulnerability threat landscape that is either remotely exploited or most targeted by attackers. A quick recap – We focused on high-risk vulnerabilities that can be remotely exploited with or without authentication, and with the view on the time ...

Elevate Your Security Posture: Implementing CIS Top 18 Controls Through Qualys Cloud Platform

The Center for Internet Security CIS is a 501c3 nonprofit organization originally formed in October 2000. CIS has created what is considered one of the industry’s “gold standard” security frameworks based on its mission to “help people, businesses, and governments protect themselves against...

Risk Fact #4: Malware in your Cloud means Exploitation is underway

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...

Qualys Tackles 2022’s Top Routinely Exploited Cyber Vulnerabilities

A unified front against malicious cyber actors is climactic in the ever-evolving cybersecurity landscape. The joint Cybersecurity Advisory CSA, a collaboration between leading cybersecurity agencies from the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, is a critical guide to...

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...

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...

Risk Fact #2: Weaponized 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...

Microsoft and Adobe Patch Tuesday, August 2023 Security Update Review

Microsoft has released its August edition of Patch Tuesday. This months updates have addressed 89 security vulnerabilities in multiple products, features, and roles. Microsoft Patch Tuesday for August 2023 Microsoft has addressed two zero-day vulnerabilities known to be publicly exploited in this...

Ensuring Compliance with DORA: How Qualys Solutions Can Help

Introduction The Digital Operational Resilience Act DORA is a new regulation implemented by the European Union to ensure the stability and security of the financial sector. Coming into effect in 2022, DORA mandates enhanced cybersecurity and operational resilience standards for financial...

Qualys Expands Cloud Platform for First-Party Application Risk Detection and Remediation

Have you faced the need to identify & respond to open-source package vulnerabilities like log4shell, openSSL, etc, in production from Day Zero? Are you using first-party, homegrown applications and are worried the risk introduced by those applications is not seen or addressed? Qualys new...

Risk Fact #1: Cloud Migration Exploitation 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...

Beating the Challenge of Cloud Detection and Response with Qualys TotalCloud Deep Learning AI

Lets go beyond the limitations of configuration management-only, non-cloud-native EDR tools for threat detection & response using deep learning AI. The global adoption of cloud technology has supercharged agile innovation in virtually every business sector. As a result, organizations are now...

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

In Part I of this three-part blog series, we discussed building a cyber risk metrics program from the ground up. We also discovered how to implement effective strategies for holistically articulating your cyber risk posture across your organization. In our second installment, we’ll delve deeper...

Who Protects PII – Consumers or Companies?

Introduction Did you know that as a consumer, 25% of the apps you engage with are collecting your Personally Identifiable Information PII? Do you know why they are collecting it or where they are storing it? Also, do you realize as a company, General Data Protection Regulation GDPR fines can reac...

Add Unique Asset Context with Custom Attributes in CSAM

There is no such thing as “too much context” when it comes to asset management. Continuous discovery and comprehensive, normalized asset data create the foundation for streamlined risk detection and response. The more reliable asset data a security team has, the better it can operationalize an...

Part I: Implementing Effective Cyber Security Metrics That Reduce Risk Realistically

As a CISO or business leader, some burning questions that often come to your mind are: How vulnerable is our cybersecurity posture? Are we better protected than we were three months or a year ago? Have our investments improved the cybersecurity posture and yielded any tangible benefits? Are my...

Oracle Patch Tuesday, July 2023 Security Update Review

Oracle has released its third quarterly edition of Critical Patch Update, which contains a group of patches for 508 security vulnerabilities. Some of the vulnerabilities addressed this month impact more than one product. These patches address vulnerabilities in Oracle code and third-party...

CVE-2023-38408: Remote Code Execution in OpenSSH’s forwarded ssh-agent

The Qualys Threat Research Unit TRU has discovered a remote code execution vulnerability in OpenSSHs forwarded ssh-agent. This vulnerability allows a remote attacker to potentially execute arbitrary commands on vulnerable OpenSSH’s forwarded ssh-agent. Given the widespread use of OpenSSH’s...

Part 2: An In-Depth Look at the Latest Vulnerability Threat Landscape (Attackers’ Edition)

The previous blog from this three-part series showcased an overview of the vulnerability threat landscape. To summarize quickly, it illustrated the popular methods of exploiting vulnerabilities and the tactical techniques employed by threat actors, malware, and ransomware groups. Perhaps more...

Evaluate Your Windows Endpoints for Storm-0978 Activity With Qualys Endpoint Security

Summary: On July 11, Microsoft released security bulletins to fix 132 vulnerabilities. With the July Patch Tuesday, Microsoft also remediated six zero-day vulnerabilities. For your quick reference, the following are the zero-day vulnerabilities: 1. CVE-2023-32046 - Windows MSHTML Platform Elevati...

Microsoft and Adobe Patch Tuesday, July 2023 Security Update Review

Microsoft has released Julys edition of Patch Tuesday! This installment of security updates addressed 132 security vulnerabilities in various products, features, and roles. Microsoft Patch Tuesday for July 2023 This months Patch Tuesday edition has fixed six zero-day vulnerabilities known to be...

Part 1: An In-Depth Look at the Latest Vulnerability Threat Landscape

The number of vulnerabilities is steadily increasing over the years, as evidenced by the 206,000 vulnerabilities reported and still counting in the National Vulnerability Database NVD. With each subsequent year, this trend has persisted since 2016, surpassing the previous vulnerability count. In...

How Qualys Drives PCI DSS 4.0 Compliance for File Integrity Monitoring

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard PCI DSS is a well-known rule for compliance by merchants and entities involved in payment card processing. The new PCI DSS 4.0 standard specifies a broad range of technical and process requirements to ensure the safety of payment cardholder data or...

Qualys Performance Tuning Series: Qualys Cloud Agent Configuration Best Practice

The following blog is part of our Qualys Performance Tuning Series. The first blog covered the topic of optimizing performance through the removal of stale assets. This series aims to provide you with comprehensive guidance on how to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of your Qualys...

Supporting Our U.S. Federal Customers for BOD 23–02 by Mitigating the Risk From Internet-Exposed Management Interfaces

On June 13, 2023, the U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency CISA released Binding Operational Directive BOD 23-02: Mitigating the Risk from Internet-Exposed Management Interfaces. The directive requires federal civilian executive-branch agencies to adhere to two primary actions:...

Qualys Responds to CISA Alert: Binding Operational Directive 23-02

The latest Binding Operational Directive from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA BOD 23-02 requires agencies to take steps to reduce the attack surface created by insecure or misconfigured management interfaces across certain classes of devices. While this new mandate impac...

CVSSv4 Public Preview Announcement

On June 8, 2023, at the 35th Annual FIRST Conference in Montreal, the public preview of CVSSv4 was announced. The Common Vulnerability Scoring System CVSS is an open framework for communicating the characteristics and severity of software vulnerabilities. Since its initial release in 2004, CVSS h...

Microsoft and Adobe Patch Tuesday, June 2023 Security Update Review

Microsoft has released Junes edition of Patch Tuesday! This installment of security updates addressed 94 security vulnerabilities in various products, features, and roles. Microsoft Patch Tuesday for June 2023 No zero-day vulnerabilities known to be exploited in the wild have been fixed in this...

Empower Your Security Team With Our Robust Script Library

Introduction Qualys Custom Assessment and Remediation CAR lets you leverage your same Qualys Cloud Agent for custom detection and remediation measures. Yes, the same agent you rely on for VMDR, Patch Management, Policy Compliance, EDR, or FIM can now be used for custom detection and response...

Progress MOVEit Transfer Vulnerability Being Actively Exploited

On June 2nd, CVE-2023-34362 was published against the Progress MOVEit Transfer product and was quickly added to CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog. MOVEit Transfer is a managed file transfer solution available as an on-premise solution that enables file transfer between business...

Behind the Screen: Three Vulnerabilities in RenderDoc

The Qualys Threat Research Unit TRU has discovered three vulnerabilities in RenderDoc. This blog will delve into the details of these three newly discovered vulnerabilities found within RenderDocs implementation. As part of our ongoing commitment to safeguard digital assets and strengthen...

TotalCloud Empowered with CloudView Integration

Qualys, a leading provider of cloud-based security and compliance solutions, offers Qualys TotalCloud - a unified vulnerability, threat, and posture management solution. This solution simplifies cloud infrastructure security by combining essential components such as Cloud Workload Protection, Clo...

Qualys Gateway Service now available in AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Marketplaces

Why are customers moving to the Cloud? Cloud computing adoption has been increasing, with cloud-specific spending expected to grow at more than five times the rate of general IT spending through 2023. Many organizations are working to move their enterprise systems to the cloud, with those migrati...

New Strain of Sotdas Malware Discovered

Introduction There are numerous malicious codes that are currently active on smart devices, such as Ddosf, Dofloo, Gafgyt, MrBlack, Persirai, Sotdas, Tsunami, Triddy, Mirai, Moose, and Satori, among others. These malicious codes and their variants can intrude into and control smart devices throug...

Adopting an Effective and Easy To Implement Zero Trust Architecture

Security professionals employed by a federal agency, supplier, or regulated private sector firm are often challenged by long lists of required cybersecurity rules that can seem endless and unchanging. White House Executive Orders, FedRAMP requirements, CISA Binding Operational Directives, NIST...

New TSA Cybersecurity Emergency Action Rule Impacts Cybersecurity and Compliance

On March 7, 2023, in the wake of President Joe Biden’s National Cybersecurity Strategy announcement, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration TSA issued a cybersecurity emergency action amendment for certain regulated airport and aircraft operators. The new Action Rule can have significant...

Microsoft and Adobe Patch Tuesday, May 2023 Security Update Review

Microsoft has addressed 49 vulnerabilities in its May Patch Tuesday edition. The security advisories cover various vulnerabilities in different products, features, and roles. Lets guide you through this months Patch Tuesday details. Microsoft Patch Tuesday for May 2023 Microsoft has also addresse...

Qualys Virtual Cyber Risk Summit: That’s a Wrap!

Over the last few years, the volume of software developed and the surge in vulnerabilities has been staggering. Combine this with a shortage of cybersecurity professionals, and organizations are left with the daunting challenge of keeping up with the sheer volume of information coming at them. At...

Qualys Launches Inaugural Cyber Risk Summit to Share Expert Insights

Cybersecurity professionals from all over are making their way to RSA’s annual conference this week in search of inspiration and expert advice on bolstering their security postures. But for those who could not disrupt their schedules to make the trip, Qualys is providing IT and security...