GRCBizassurance Partners with Qualys to Deliver Cloud-Based Vulnerability Management Services in South Africa

Johannesburg, South Africa - February 6, 2012 - GRCBizassurance and Qualys, Inc. announced today their strategic partnership plan to deliver industry-leading Vulnerability Management Services to South African and Sub-Saharan customers, focusing initially on the telecommunications sector, public sector, and resources sector.

As part of its trusted assurance service, GRCBizassurance will provide independent Managed Security Services using the QualysGuard IT Security and Compliance Suite. GRCBizassurance will offer customers a standardized and ongoing process of assessing their customers’ networks for vulnerabilities, understanding the risk profile of vulnerabilities of affected assets, remediating against these vulnerabilities, and verifying that the corrective actions are completed to ensure vulnerabilities and risks are not repeated. GRCBizassurance will use QualysGuard as a platform for assisting customers to reduce their overall security risk, prevent business exposure, keep their customers’ threat profile up to date, and provide comprehensive SANS-based security dashboard reporting. GRCBizassurance’s use of the QualysGuard suite will form part of GRCBizassurance’s Security Assurance and Enterprise Security Intelligence Service.

GRCBizassurance selected Qualys because of its proven track record with more than 5,500 customers worldwide, performing more than 500 million IP audits per year. Its growing portfolio of products includes vulnerability management, policy compliance, payment card industry compliance, web application scanning, and malware detection services. Leveraging a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model, the QualysGuard services are easy to implement with no software to install or maintain and can be easily accessed and managed from any web browser on 24x7 basis. Qualys offers its services on a per IP basis with an annual pricing subscription model that includes free training and support. Qualys also maintains XML APIs for integration with internal systems and processes (e.g. service management), and integration with security incident and event management tools. Featuring the world’s largest and most up-to-date vulnerability signature database in the security industry according to CVE standards, QualysGuard provides accurate results meaning IT operations and security analysts do not fire-fight false vulnerabilities. QualysGuard also has a template-based reporting system, which ensures risk output can be available in minutes with no modifications required for the various functions within the security operations team. Working with GRCBizassurance as the Qualys Value Added Services Partner, Qualys will offer a dedicated technical account management team to ensure project success. Qualys has also been recognized by leading industry analysts; Qualys received the highest possible rating of “Strong Positive” in the April 2011 Gartner, Inc. “MarketScope for Vulnerability Assessment.”* It was also ranked number one for the third consecutive year by IDC in the Worldwide Device Vulnerability Assessment Revenue Share for 2010.**

• Gartner, Inc., “MarketScope for Vulnerability Assessment,” by Kelly M. Kavanagh, Mark Nicolett and John Pescatore, April 5, 2011
• • IDC’s Worldwide Security and Vulnerability Management 2011–2015 Forecast and 2010 Vendor Shares (Doc # 231292)

About the MarketScope Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose

About GRCBizassuranceGRCBizassurance provides independent assurance to customers on their governance, risk, compliance (GRC) and information security. GRCBizassurance’s tailored Trusted Assurance Service assists customers to achieve sustainable business growth, and investor and stakeholder confidence. GRCBizassurance offers Managed Risk and Compliance Services, including: formulating the customer’s Security Strategy and Programme; assisting with Security Architecture design and optimization; overseeing the milestone-based implementation of security initiatives; providing ongoing security assurance on changes to the customer’s architecture and environment; providing enterprise security intelligence (using QualysGuard and related security assurance platforms); providing ongoing security assurance (including dashboard reporting). GRCBizassurance enables customers to manage enterprise risks, compliance obligations, and ensure a fit-for-purpose information security posture. They help customers to adopt good practices in PCI-DSS, ISO27000, CobIT, SANS, OECG certification – all of which is required for their customers to leverage sustainable competitive advantage. They are not audit-driven, rather work alongside their customer’s teams to enable management to have assurance of their GRC maturity, and security posture. They help customers to adopt global best practice security controls, security assurance and governance aimed at detecting and mitigating enterprise risk. GRCBizassurance’s customers are blue chips in South Africa in the telecommunications sector, financial sector and public sector. GRCBizassurance is a private company registered in South Africa, with 74% black-owned business (majority, black female shareholding).

About Qualys

Qualys, Inc. is the leading provider of cloud-based information security and compliance solutions with 5,500+ customers in 85 countries, including 50 of the Forbes Global 100. The Qualys cloud-based platform and integrated suite of applications helps businesses simplify security operations and lower the cost of compliance, delivering critical security intelligence on demand and automating the full spectrum of auditing, compliance and protection for IT systems and web applications. Founded in 1999, Qualys has established strategic partnerships with leading managed service providers and consulting organizations, including BT, Dell SecureWorks, Fujitsu, IBM, NTT, Symantec, Verizon, and Wipro. The company is also a founding member of the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA).

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

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