Qualys Rolls Out VMDR to General Public

Qualys unveiled its Vulnerability Management, Detection, and Response (VMDR) solution last fall at the Qualys Security Conference. They shared details of its features and capabilities, but it was initially available on a limited basis. Recently, as much of the world locked down in some form of quarantine to contain the spread of COVID-19, Qualys made VMDR available to the general public.

What is VMDR?

For those who are not yet familiar, let’s start with a brief overview of VMDR. Qualys combined its asset discovery and inventory, vulnerability and configuration controls assessments, Threat intel, and remediation capabilities in a single app workflow.

VMDR is an all-in-one solution that provides:

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

Protecting a Remote Workforce

Thanks to mobile devices, cloud-based SaaS (software-as-a-service) applications, and fairly ubiquitous internet access, most companies have at least dabbled in remote productivity. Many organizations have experienced a dramatic rise in remote workers, though, and suddenly they are faced with the challenge of maintaining both productivity and security with a complete remote workforce.

“If an outcome of the current crisis is a more enduring entrenchment of remote work for the indefinite future, the changes in enterprise security architecture they precipitate may come to stay. The performance of these services will have to meet or exceed that expected from direct connection to the target – which makes it seem likely that cloud providers are in the best position to meet this demand may either embrace these trends directly or become key enablers of new approaches, said” Scott Crawford, research vice president, security at 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence in a Qualys press release.

Streamlined Security

Companies of all sizes and across all industries are looking for streamlined security that is effective and efficient. VMDR gives organizations what they need to identify and inventory assets on the network, analyze vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, prioritize issues to focus on what’s most urgent, and take action to quickly protect assets from critical threats.

Toyota Financial Services was an early adopter of VMDR and has worked with Qualys to ensure VMDR delivers those capabilities. Georges Bellefontaine, manager of vulnerability management at Toyota Financial Services, explained in the Qualys press release, “VMDR raises the maturity of our Vulnerability Management program to its next level. It allows additional monitoring of the infrastructure to effectively and accurately and, in real time, identify vulnerabilities, as well as weak asset hardening to better prioritize needed remediation. The paradigm change is the use of machine learning capabilities to correlate multiple issues discovered by multiple Qualys modules, and in real time join these issues with their metadata and filters to prioritize actionable remediation. VMDR provides focus on actionable issues to drive the reduction of imminent risk without doing the analysis outside of the Qualys platform.”

Bellefontaine also recently told Sumedh Thakar, President and Chief Product Officer at Qualys, that Qualys VMDR has provided him with an accurate, real-time asset management tool. Toyota has the Qualys agent deployed on more than 10,000 devices, enabling them to better understand what assets they have, where they are, and how they are being used.

Get VMDR

Visit the Qualys website for more information about VMDR. VMDR is priced per asset, and includes cloud agents, unlimited network scanners, passive network sensors, and container sensors. Qualys offers VMDR on a free trial basis, though, so you can test it out and determine how well it works for you before making the decision to invest in the tool. For additional protection, you should also take a look at Qualys Remote Endpoint Detection. Qualys recently added malware detection to the solution and you can take advantage of a 60-day free trial to check it out.