Qualys Introduces Fleet of Virtualised Software-Based Scanner Appliances for Enterprises, Consultants and Cloud Environments

San Francisco, Calif. - February 14, 2011 - Qualys®, Inc., the leading provider of on demand IT security risk and compliance management solutions, today at RSA Conference USA 2011, announced the introduction of virtualised software-based scanner appliances for its QualysGuard Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) IT security and compliance platform. The new software-based scanner appliances will run under common virtualisation engines including VMware, Xen and Hyper-V. These virtualised scanners will supplement the current hardware-based QualysGuard Scanner Appliance that is currently in use by thousands of organisations worldwide. Over 7,000 appliances are currently deployed on customers’ sites in 85 countries. Like with the hardware-based scanners, customers can manage the virtual scanners from their QualysGuard accounts via a secure web interface, where all gathered scan data will be available for reporting and remediation.

The QualysGuard software-based virtual scanners will be released in multiple phases to support different computing environments:

• Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) version for scanning EC2 target systems within the Amazon cloud. This scanner is transparent to customers and comes fully integrated with QualysGuard via the Amazon APIs for asset validation, discovery and scanning, allowing customers to scan their EC2 targets seamlessly without having to install any additional software.
• Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) version for scanning VPC target systems within a customer’s VPC environment in the Amazon cloud. Customers will install and configure this scanner in their VPC instance on Xen through the Amazon portal.
• Consultant version that is used with VMware Workstation/Player, to be run on consultants’ laptops for scanning their clients during engagements. Consultants will install and manage this scanner on their laptops via the VMware console.
• Enterprise version intended for data centers, integrated with centralised management systems such as VMware vSphere for scanning enterprise networks. Enterprise customers will install this scanner on VMware, Xen and Hyper-V within their managed environments and will configure it using virtualisation management systems.

“Enterprises are now streamlining their computing infrastructures by consolidating and virtualising their data centers and moving enterprise applications to SaaS providers and cloud computing platforms. This major shift brings a new set of security and compliance requirements that we have to deal with,” said Philippe Courtot, chairman and CEO for Qualys. “While enterprise software vendors will have to rebuild their offerings to adjust to these new requirements, Qualys, having built its solutions via SaaS since its inception, can now provide the required functionality by delivering its scanners as virtualised software without having to re-architect the applications that manage them.”

Availability and Pricing

• Amazon EC2 Virtual Scanner – Expected availability: March 2011. Bundled with the QualysGuard subscription.
• Amazon VPC Virtual Scanner – Expected availability: June 2011. Annual cost: £795.
• Consultant Virtual Scanner – Expected availability: June 2011. Annual cost: £795.
• Data Center Virtual Scanner – Expected availability: September 2011. Annual cost: £795.

About Qualys

Qualys, Inc. is the leading provider of on demand IT security risk and compliance management solutions – delivered as a service. Qualys’ Software-as-a-Service solutions are deployed in a matter of hours anywhere in the world, providing customers an immediate and continuous view of their security and compliance postures.

The QualysGuard® service is used today by more than 5,000 organizations in 85 countries, including 47 of the Fortune Global 100, and performs more than 500 million IP audits per year. Qualys has the largest vulnerability management deployment in the world at a Fortune Global 50 company, and has been recognized by leading industry analysts for its market leadership.

Qualys has established strategic agreements with leading managed service providers and consulting organizations including BT, Etisalat, Fujitsu, IBM, I(TS)2, LAC, NTT, SecureWorks, Symantec, Tata Communications and TELUS. Qualys is also a founding member of the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA).

For more information, please visit www.qualys.com.

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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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