Qualys Introduces VMDR: Vulnerability Management, Detection, and Response

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Qualys customers and executives are gathered in Las Vegas this week for the annual Qualys Security Conference. The event officially kicks off with an opening keynote on Wednesday morning, but Qualys wanted to get the party started a little early with the announcement of VMDR—or vulnerability management, detection, and response.

Qualys is known as a vulnerability management solution. In its current form, Qualys—and the Qualys Cloud Platform—are much more holistic and comprehensive than just vulnerability management, but VM is where Qualys initially staked its claim as a leading cybersecurity vendor. It makes sense, then, for Qualys to enter the growing MDR market by putting a VM spin on it.

MDR and Then Some

According to a press release announcing VMDR, the new solution combines asset discovery and inventory, vulnerability assessment—including configuration controls—prioritization, remediation and audit capabilities in a single app. In other words, Qualys VMDR takes the standard MDR model to another level. It reminds me of the famous scene from This Is Spinal Tap (if you don’t know what I’m referring to, check out this clip). Sure, there are other MDR solutions, but this one goes to eleven.

Based on his quote in the Qualys press release, Scott Crawford, research vice president at 451 Research, agrees. “With VMDR, Qualys integrates highly valued and much-needed asset visibility with vulnerability management so that IT teams can have full visibility of their global IT assets (known and unknown). This provides the ability to identify the exposure of those assets in real time, and to prioritize remediation by combining real-time threat indicators with asset context to remediate with one click and then audit the process.”

Qualys VMDR

With VMDR, Qualys promises to elevate vulnerability management—providing a single app that delivers:

• Automated asset detection and categorization
• Real-time vulnerability and misconfiguration detection
• Automated remediation prioritization
• Patching and remediation
• Single pane of glass management and streamlined reporting

“Game-changing VMDR takes vulnerability management to the next level by providing the power to continuously detect vulnerability and misconfigurations across the entire global hybrid IT environment, and respond in real time to remediate assets that are vulnerable or already compromised from a single platform with built-in orchestration,” said Philippe Courtot, chairman and CEO of Qualys in the VMDR press release. “Equally important, the new asset-based pricing and its delivery as a single, self-updating app, makes it easier to procure, deploy and manage, drastically reducing the total cost of ownership.”

Check out VMDR

Qualys announced VMDR this week at the Qualys Security Conference, but it won’t be available until January 2020. Pricing is per asset and starts at $199 per asset—with a minimum quantity of 32 assets. There is more information about VMDR available on the Qualys website if you want to learn more about the new app.