Qualys reaches Milestone of 1,000 global customers

Infosecurity Europe, London, UK — April 29, 2003 — Qualys, the industry provider of on-demand security audit and vulnerability management solutions, announced at Infosecurity today that its QualysGuard service has reached a milestone of 1,000 global subscribers. Among the 400 companies who have adopted the automated scanning tool in the last six months is the global chemical leader ICI. The QualysGuard service, delivered over the Web with an Intranet Scanner appliance, provides businesses with an automated solution to perform regular security audits, vulnerability management and remediation workflow, without the burden and cost of deploying and maintaining complex software or hardware.

“As a Web-based solution, QualysGuard enables us to perform security audits whenever and virtually wherever we want to. We can spot vulnerabilities immediately as soon as they’re added to the QualysGuard database and work proactively to fix them. This helps us secure all of our network entry points, enforce security policies and comply with national - and international - regulations,” said Paul Simmonds, Director of Global Information Security for ICI.

Like many major corporations, ICI is moving to require that the third-party suppliers on whom it relies for Internet-facing transactions, such as e-commerce and its public websites, are BS7799 compliant. With its unique ability to provide independent audits on an on-going basis, QualysGuard acts as an effective control tool to ensure that these suppliers are indeed measuring up to the requirements of the BS7799 and ISO 17799 standards.

“QualysGuard is a core component of ICI’s ability to secure our wider border. Not only are we scanning our ICI-controlled border, but also those systems of everyone who represents ICI throughout the electronic world. Before Qualys, we used to be in a reactive mode. Now we’re alerting our vendors when things change and advising them what they need to do,” said Simmonds

QualysGuard’s fully customisable reporting structure is also of compelling benefit to ICI. “With QualysGuard’s distributed reporting and management functionality, we’re able to set up our key service providers as individual users with separate access privileges and workflow responsibilities… so they see the same reports that we do, that way we’re jointly on top of how they’re performing. Before QualysGuard, this level of network security management was simply not possible,” added Simmonds.

Qualys’ customers represent a range of global organizations, from Fortune 500 businesses, government organizations, national healthcare institutions, international financial services, manufacturing organizations and more. Recent new customers include BASF, ICI, Novartis, Rockwell Automation, R.R. Donnelley, California State Lottery and many others.

The QualysGuard On-Demand platform is comprised of three components: Network Discovery, Security Auditing, and Vulnerability Management and Remediation Workflow. Together, these components enable organizations to accurately identify the systems on their network, recognize and prioritise vulnerabilities, and manage them through remediation. Unlike audits conducted with traditional software scanners, QualysGuard audits are fully automated and unalterable. They provide indelible audit trails that record when the security audit was performed, what vulnerabilities were uncovered, how to fix them, when they were assigned and to whom, and when the repairs were successfully implemented. QualysGuard allows such audits to be performed at any time and on a regular basis.

“The incredible growth we’ve seen in our customer base demonstrates the increasing need for regular security auditing and vulnerability management. We have worked very closely with our customers to address their requirements to stay ahead of security threats and ensure compliance with new regulations,” said Philippe Courtot, Chairman and CEO of Qualys. “One of the advantages of web delivery is that we can continue to develop our QualysGuard solution at a faster pace to meet our customers’ needs in this ever-changing security environment.”

About Qualys

With more than 2,000 subscribers ranging from small businesses to multinational corporations, Qualys has become the leader in on demand vulnerability management and policy compliance. The company allows security managers to strengthen the security of their networks effectively, conduct automated security audits and ensure compliance with internal policies and external regulations. Qualys’ on demand technology offers customers significant economic advantages, requiring no capital outlay or infrastructure to deploy and manage. Its distributed scanning capabilities and unprecedented scalability make it ideal for large, distributed organisations. Hundreds of large companies have deployed Qualys on a global scale, including AXA, DuPont, Hershey Foods, ICI Ltd, Novartis, Sodexho, Standard Chartered Bank and many others. Qualys is headquartered in Redwood City, California, with European offices in France, Germany and the U.K., and Asian representatives in Japan, Singapore, Australia, Korea and the Republic of China. For more information, please visit www.qualys.com.

About ICI

ICI is one of the world’s largest producers of specialty products and paints. It is a global leader in creating, developing, making and marketing ingredients for foods and personal care, specialty polymers, electronic materials, fragrances and flavours. Together with its traditional strengths in paints, ICI is a major player in the worldwide development of sensory products. Products made by ICI are the vital ingredients that add value to its customers’ products and processes. ICI has 36,000 employees worldwide, and had sales in 2002 of more than £ 6 billion. Further information can be found on ICI’s website - www.ici.com

Qualys, the Qualys logo and QualysGuard are proprietary trademarks of Qualys, Inc. All other products or names may be trademarks of their respective companies.

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