What is our primary use case?
We use Qualys TotalCloud to assess the security posture of our cloud-hosted environment. This tool allows us to access real-time data, categorize assets, prioritize critical vulnerabilities, and establish regular patching policies to mitigate our overall vulnerability risk.
We are eager to utilize Qualys TotalCloud to create a ticketing system integrated with our SecOps module, such as ServiceNow or a similar tool. This integration will enable automated ticket creation following assessments and vulnerability identification within our environments. The system should assign tickets to respective team members, prioritize fixes, and provide comprehensive dashboards for tracking progress and visualizing generated reports.
How has it helped my organization?
Qualys TotalCloud provides written explanations to help with remediation paths and eliminate cyber risk, significantly reducing our time spent on these tasks. It ensures that we can minimize manual efforts and prioritize security issues identified by the platform, allowing us to focus on critical areas and improve overall efficiency.
Qualys TotalCloud has significantly improved our organization by automating our reporting processes, reducing the time spent on report creation from two hours to less than fifteen to twenty minutes. It offers complete visibility of our cloud environment, which aids in prioritizing vulnerabilities and security risks effectively.
It provides unified vulnerability and threat assessments across both Infrastructure as a Service and Software as a Service, significantly improving our overall cloud security posture management. Compared to our previous Managed Cloud environment, even within this organization, we have made substantial progress. Previously, we relied on different tools with limited features for vulnerability posture management. However, with Qualys TotalCloud, we have implemented new policies and processes for remediation, resulting in a 70 to 90 percent improvement in our security standards.
Qualys TotalCloud offers a consolidated, prioritized view of risk across our chosen scope, allowing us to focus on specific vulnerabilities and security threats within a single dashboard. This streamlined approach eliminates the need to collate data from multiple sources, improving efficiency and providing comprehensive visibility into our cloud environment.
TruRisk Insights considers multiple factors, including Qualys detection score, asset scoring, risk, and CVSS scoring, to generate a comprehensive priority rating. Additionally, customization options allow for incorporating factors like internet exposure, public accessibility, or intranet presence, further refining the risk scoring and prioritization process.
Vulnerability identification is inconsistent, especially for assets with high vulnerability scores. This is influenced by the environment and project of the asset, and potential oversight during migration between versions. This may lead to a few individuals discovering significant vulnerabilities. However, Qualys' TruRisk Insights can identify the post-migration version of an asset, enabling us to determine the specific vulnerability and appropriate remediation actions, such as patching.
TruRisk Insights has significantly improved our security posture by automating our reporting process. Previously, creating reports required manually identifying assets, categorizing their environment, and calculating scores in Excel, which was time-consuming. Now, with TruRisk Insights, we can generate reports in less than 20 minutes by simply using the Qualys TotalCloud console to download the desired information.
What is most valuable?
One of Qualys' best features is its categorization, which allows us to see the types of assets, their security postures, and the AI-powered version of the tool. The AI enhancements simplify vulnerability management by eliminating the need for SQL queries to create policies. Now, we can simply input our requirements, such as critical vulnerabilities in the production environment or specific operating systems, and the tool generates the results accordingly. Additionally, we can create custom dashboards to monitor specific areas of interest, like vulnerabilities affecting a particular OS, exposed ports, majorly targeted vulnerabilities, or the most exploited vulnerabilities in the environment.
What needs improvement?
Two areas for improvement in Qualys TotalCloud are the speed of the public cloud platform and vulnerability detection. While the public cloud platform is necessary due to the lack of a private cloud infrastructure, page load speeds could be faster. Additionally, vulnerability detection needs improvement, as it currently takes several days for new vulnerabilities to be added to the knowledge base, hindering prompt detection and remediation. Ideally, updates should be more immediate, enabling quicker implementation of solutions.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Qualys TotalCloud for two to three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability is excellent, with well-planned maintenance schedules communicated in advance by Qualys. This ensures business continuity and preparedness for any planned downtime.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I would rate the scalability of Qualys TotalCloud nine out of ten.
How are customer service and support?
The Qualys customer support is exceptional.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
How was the initial setup?
The deployment was straightforward, taking less than a day.
What about the implementation team?
The implementation involved four or five team members on our side. It's unclear how many were involved from the Qualys side.
What was our ROI?
Regarding return on investment, it is going well, although we are yet to complete year-end assessments. Qualys TotalCloud has saved us approximately 15 to 20 percent of our efforts.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Although Qualys TotalCloud is relatively expensive due to its unique automation features, its cost-effectiveness is rated an eight out of ten, with ten being the most costly.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We evaluated other solutions such as Rapid7 and Falcon CrowdStrike. However, Qualys provides more comprehensive features.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate Qualys TotalCloud a nine out of ten.
We recommend and provide Qualys TotalCloud to our clients in various locations. We also utilize it internally across our global organization, spanning multiple countries in Asia, Europe, the US, and other regions. Therefore, Qualys TotalCloud is deployed globally. We have approximately 850 users with varying levels of access. Many have read-only access to view reports and the status of their environment. However, only a limited number of users have the necessary permissions to perform scans and make changes. The majority of users have read-only access.
Qualys TotalCloud, while generally reliable, occasionally requires maintenance and may experience downtime. Qualys performs its quarterly maintenance, but infrequent issues can arise, perhaps once or twice a year, causing crashes or slowdowns within the system. These rare instances may result in limited or delayed portal access, hindering report generation and dashboard viewing.
As a satisfied user, I recommend Qualys TotalCloud to other organizations or clients. I see myself as biased because I am a fan of the product and extensively use it.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Other