Qualys Patch Management Reviews

I am a cybersecurity engineer focused on vulnerability assessment and penetration testing. We use Qualys Patch Management to scan our client infrastructure and external-facing applications. We collect asset details from clients and perform activities using Qualys VMDR to prepare and submit reports. If vulnerabilities are detected, we conduct patch management.

We implemented Qualys Patch Management to simplify patching processes and maintain a comprehensive record of all assets, both those already patched and those requiring patching.

Qualys Patch Management's risk-based approach to automation is effective in addressing vulnerabilities. By configuring policies, patches are applied automatically, eliminating concerns about oversight and ensuring comprehensive mitigation.

The integration of Patch Management and VMDR is critical for medium and large organizations because it automatically includes relevant patches and configuration changes to remediate detected vulnerabilities. This allows organizations to gain clear visibility into device vulnerabilities and take immediate action to mitigate risks.

Qualys Patch Management keeps our clients informed of all security aspects. It keeps the quality up to date, with vulnerability databases and new CVEs based on the CVSS score. Clients are pleased with the insights on their security posture and any security gaps.

We use TruRisk automation and the Qualys knowledge base, with its batch management and information-sharing features, to remediate vulnerabilities without involving the security team.

Qualys Patch Management provides a centralized platform to identify, prioritize, and address vulnerabilities across all assets. This allows us to tailor vulnerability assessments and patching strategies for clients with critical assets, such as servers hosting public-facing web applications, by leveraging asset criticality tags to create dedicated sections within the platform.

Qualys Patch Management has helped improve our patch rate by 35 percent.

Qualys Patch Management helps reduce our client's organizational risk by 50 percent.

Qualys Patch Management allows us to structure all the patches together and schedule patch management sessions. If we do not need a particular patch, it can push it automatically. It provides insight into the organization's security posture and keeps databases updated with new CVEs.

The pricing of the solution is slightly high compared to other tools in our field. It’s manageable for clients, but as a service provider, it can be challenging due to the lower cost of vulnerability assessments and penetration testing.

I have been using Qualys Patch Management for the past two years.

Qualys Patch Management is a stable solution. I would rate its stability as a ten out of ten.

Scalability could be improved, as not everyone can afford it, and some may not fully understand how to use Qualys.

During the license purchase process, there was some delay in technical communication from Qualys. 

Positive

The deployment involved a team of six people and took about half a year.

Qualys Patch Management has saved time and resources by reducing the need for human resources. Clients are satisfied with the insights and reduced vulnerabilities over time.

While the cost of Qualys Patch Management is slightly high compared to alternative tools, it is not excessively expensive. I would rate the pricing as a seven or eight out of ten for expense.

I would rate Qualys Patch Management ten out of ten.

Our clients who use Qualys Patch Management are medium to enterprise-level businesses.

Qualys handles the maintenance for Patch Management.

I recommend Qualys Patch Management to others due to its ability to enhance organizational and client security posture while reducing time and costs associated with vulnerability assessment and auditing.

I have used this management system to remediate vulnerabilities.

There are a few vulnerabilities we can remediate very quickly. It reduces the time delay. If there are configuration-level changes, we can create and push scripts. 

It helps us increase visibility for faster remediation. 

Syncing between the MBR and patches is the feature. Another valuable feature is pushing configuration-level changes for a script, which leads to a single solution for all the changes. 

From a risk perspective, prioritization helps us more by allowing us to see the visibility of assets with more critical vulnerabilities. We can then push the patches immediately to remediate or reduce risk as soon as possible. That is the major advantage I have.

The integrations with VMware include configurations to mitigate vulnerabilities. It helps us identify permissions and whatever is applicable for the vulnerability for faster patching. 

It helps us remediate vulnerabilities without involving our security team. This helps further relieve time delays. We've saved around 50% of time with patching with Qualys.

The solution provides a single source of truth. We have everything all in one place, saving 40% of our time when compared to the older approach. We don't have to look at different platforms or move back and forth between tools between patching and validation. 

It has effective risk reduction recommendation reports. It streamlines remediation and gives us more data on the vulnerabilities. It helps us to identify the risk factors and levels of risk for increased prioritization.

Our patch rates have increased significantly. 

We've been able to reduce organizational risk by 50%.

The patch status and patch completion information should be improved. If a patch fails due to some reason, such as a Windows error, the error code that gets published should be more detailed. This would make it easier for us to identify where the issue lies, whether at the network level, machine level, or elsewhere. 

I have been using the solution for the past three years.

The stability is rated ten out of ten.

The scalability is rated ten out of ten.

I would rate technical support as nine out of ten.

Positive

I used different solutions like KACE, among others. We switched so we could use a single tool to make the process as simple as possible.

We use a hybrid cloud approach.

The setup was just about enabling a module for it. Since the system is already deployed, we only had to enable the module.

We use it across multiple locations.

There is no maintenance required once deployed.

As I said previously, it has reduced the risk by fifty percent compared to the previous solution. Everything is in SaaS.

As a single tool, it is a better choice. I would recommend the solution to other users. 

I would rate the overall solution as nine out of ten.

We are in the education industry, and we perform weekly scans. On weekends, we scan our entire management, servers, and expectations. Then on Monday, I set up some weekly reports. From these, I'll have my vulnerabilities and Patch management reports showing which third-party applications I installed on users' workstations. I tested these on a Monday or Tuesday with Patch Management. If all goes well, by Wednesday or Thursday, I'm patching the rest of the environment. In terms of workstations, I scan and patch them weekly, but for servers, I wait for the Microsoft patching cycle. Only then do we patch the servers, allowing for a restart for each update. After the Microsoft updates, we can restart our servers.

The auto patch is useful. On zero-day vulnerabilities or patches, we can automatically apply those without user interference. We can drastically decrease vulnerabilities, especially third-party ones, such as a Java update that usually takes time to test on different machines. With Patch Management, machines can be grouped into test workstations, and a fix can be deployed and monitored for a day or two. If nothing goes wrong, it is deployed to all users. In Koketso Towers, you will notice about one thousand or five thousand mortgages decrease. This has helped us keep up with vulnerabilities, especially on workstations. Test management is a module added to the vulnerability management scanner, which also has the auto-fix feature. We don't usually use this on servers but on workstations. For instance, if there's a vulnerability that is not a zero-day, but something else, we can test and deploy it almost immediately from the workstation.

I do not have any major problems. I think it's working great. My recommendation would be not just for Patch Management but for Qualys itself. I am using Qualys through a third party or reseller. The issue is that when buying Qualys licenses, from my side, I'm buying for about seven thousand five hundred users or machines. I also need to buy licenses for another seven thousand five hundred for patch management. We dislike having to pay extra. We don't mind paying for additional modules like Certificate View. The test management part requires buying licenses. We are trying to negotiate with our reseller. If they can't provide us, we'll go straight to Qualys and see if they can assist.

I have been using Patch Management for about six months now.

The solution is very stable. I have encountered no problems so far.

We don't interact much since our service is managed. We only contact Qualys if there are serious issues. Last year, we communicated with Qualys two times when our service provider couldn't assist us in resolving one vulnerability.

Positive

We started before moving to VMDR. We used a previous version called Qualys VM, and now it's Qualys VMDR. With Qualys VM, we had access to the console.

The setup was straightforward. We began by installing the scanner, scanning the entire environment, and then categorizing items as servers, workstations, etc., applying tags accordingly. It took us about two weeks to have it fully operational with both daily and monthly reports set up. The deployment is easy through SCCM from Microsoft, as we deploy based on our AD groups.

I would give it a ten out of ten. It is an excellent module to have within the environment, as most environments have Windows Patch cycles, but not for third-party applications. Patch Management not only addresses third-party applications but can also patch vulnerabilities. It allows seamless deployment from the console if a patch for a vulnerability is available. I would rate the overall solution a 10 out of 10.

We have been using Qualys Patch Management alongside vulnerability management. We utilize it to manage high and critical vulnerabilities by prioritizing patches based on asset value and vulnerability score. We rate our asset with an asset value. Along with that, once we have a vulnerability score, we prioritize patches and servers that are high and critical. That is how we utilize both vulnerability management and patch management.

The risk-based approach provides a better way of patching. It helps identify criticalities based on asset value, enhancing decision-making.

Qualys Patch Management has helped us reduce the overall risk in our environment by integrating with vulnerability management and VMDR, allowing us to address risks based on asset value and risk levels. It is important for us that it is integrated with VMDR so that we are aware of the vulnerabilities in our system and can apply patches as per the associated risk, asset value, and threat to the environment. It is very important to integrate these tools. It helps reduce vulnerabilities through diligent patch application and improves overall efficiency.

TruRisk score is helpful for us, but we still have to ensure the security team is involved in the governance process to ensure that we are taking care of the entire environment. We include the security team on the governance side but the implementation and the activity can be done without them.

There has been an improvement in our patch rate. The efficiency in our environment increased by 30% over three years, compared to the tool we used previously. The duration of patching decreased in the environment.

The Risk Reduction Recommendation Report is good. It gives an overview of what can be remediated soon. It gives a good understanding of which patch can remediate the majority of the risks in the environment. It helps us see which vulnerabilities would reduce the most risk within our organization.

We have all the information on one page. The dashboard provides comprehensive information on one page, making it easy to apply patches and monitor pending updates. It helps a lot from the governance point of view to see what exactly is missing and what exactly has been applied.

They have already covered most of the things. I do not see a lot of opportunities for improvement. It is pretty good. However, it would be good to have more widgets and AI-generated reports. I have not seen anything related to AI with Qualys. It would be beneficial for Qualys to incorporate AI-generated tools for Patch Management and VMDR. This could assist in managing risks, providing AI-generated reports, and creating risk letters for clients, which can streamline communication.

I have been using Qualys Patch Management for more than three years.

We did not encounter any significant stability issues, except during a notified period when they were transitioning to another cloud vendor or fixing an issue.

Customer service is responsive and effective. They are pretty fast. They generally respond to inquiries and provide a resolution within a couple of hours. So far, I have not seen a case where the resolution was not provided within 48 hours.

Positive

We previously used BigFix. We switched to Qualys because BigFix moved from IBM to HCL, and we wanted a tool certified for PCI compliance. Qualys is PCI compliant.

We have a hybrid deployment model. It was an easy process because we knew what we needed to configure the firewall rules and ports. The documentation and other information was provided by the Qualys partner. It did not take us a long time to get it deployed and test it out. We did a PoC, and everything worked fine.

Overall, the setup process was straightforward, and with good documentation and support, we deployed it within our change management framework in about two weeks.

It does not require any maintenance, but we need to ensure that we get rid of the licenses when not required or request licenses when we have more devices planned to be onboarded. That is something we need to look into. When we do not have a device or we do not need a scanner in a particular location, we can get rid of it, so from a maintenance point of view, there is not much.

This deployment also involved integration with vulnerability management. We had a project manager coordinating efforts with the vendor, a documentation coordinator, and a team to handle change management and firewall configurations. Overall, we had three people. Effort-wise, it did not require a lot. They had to coordinate a couple of times for two to three hours.

Its price is competitive in the market. Compared to other solutions like Rapid7, Qualys offers a favorable price point and robust features.

Overall, I would rate Qualys Patch Management a nine out of ten.

We primarily use Patch Management in our organization for remediating vulnerabilities for which patches are supported by Qualys. 

There is a zero-touch mechanism in Qualys for patch management. For example, if we have a product for which frequent patches are released, we do not have to manually initiate a patch. It can be initiated automatically when a new patch is available.

The integration between Qualys VMDR and Patch Management allows us to monitor job statuses and ensures timely remediation. Previously, we had only the VMDR solution from Qualys. For remediation, we had to go to a different solution. There was a delay in the syncing process. With the integration of Qualys VMDR and Patch Management, we have more real-time and comprehensive data. We can see information about the status of the job and other things in a single console. We have a faster view of the remediation effort.

We also have the ability to view and select patches based on the assets. There might be hundreds of patches available in the knowledge base. It gives us patches available only for the selected assets. This saves time and reduces risk.

For vulnerability management, Qualys serves as a single source of truth, but for patch management, we have to use some more tools because Qualys does not support certain scenarios.

We have seen about 60% to 70% improvement in the patch rate so far. It has reduced the organization's risk. 

Patch Management offers pre-action and post-action features, which provide the ability to execute scripts during the installation or uninstallation of software. This helps me make changes from Qualys itself.

Not all patches are supported, so there are some restrictions. Some remediations require script-level changes which Qualys does not support. We have to manually create those scripts.

They should focus on increasing the list of supported patches. New software or data is continuously released, and it would be beneficial if patches were updated in the knowledge base more quickly. Sometimes, there are delays of three to four days, which should be addressed.

I have been using Qualys Patch Management for more than one and a half years.

I would rate the stability a nine out of ten. Occasionally, I need to change patches for certain software like Google Chrome, but overall, it is stable.

The scalability is good. It handles the requirements effectively.

We are using it at multiple locations. We have about 300k users.

I would rate their customer support a nine out of ten. Although there can be some delays, overall, the support is satisfactory.

Positive

We used a different patch management solution previously. We switched to Qualys because it integrates seamlessly with VMDR, which makes it easier to manage vulnerabilities and patching in a single console.

The initial setup was easy. We had already deployed the agent. It involved selecting the asset and enabling the module.

It does not require any maintenance from our side. It is a SaaS platform. Everything is handled by Qualys.

I would recommend Qualys Patch Management if you are integrating it with VMDR. If you are using a different solution for vulnerability management and considering Qualys solely for patch management, it might not be the best choice.

I would rate Qualys Patch Management a nine out of ten.

Our primary use case is to try to reduce our time to remediate. One of our sister teams, the attack surface team, uses the scanning piece. Therefore, we thought it would be best to close the ecosystem and use the patching piece. The feedback from the PoC made it evident that making a shift was necessary.

By implementing Qualys Patch Management, we wanted to reduce the meantime to remediate and have the ability to weigh our threats so that we are not just patching everything; we are patching what is most critical to our environment.

The automation capability that it has to create jobs, set them, and forget them was very intriguing to our business.

The risk-based approach is beneficial because not everything that requires a patch poses a true risk. It makes much more sense because everything that requires a patch may not necessarily be an exposure or true risk. As a leader, it allows me to make sure that I am directing our efforts into something that means. We are not chasing things around because that does not produce a lot of value in the end. 

We were able to realize its benefits immediately. We configured it and used it in the test and a few production machines. It was easy to build jobs and associate the tags that were being used. With the full knowledge base that Qualys has, we did not have to decipher what scanning is saying versus what the actual resolution is. Having all that built into one solution is just great.

Qualys Patch Management gives us a single source of truth for assets and vulnerabilities that need to be assessed, prioritized, and remediated. That is why we purchased it.

The most valuable features are the ease of managing both first-party and third-party patching, the generation of dashboards, and the provision of real-time information. It provides real-time information, with the agent checking in every four hours, offering nearly up-to-date information at any time of the day. This is in contrast to our previous tool, where we did not have this capability.

There is room for improvement in the detection logic. It sometimes detects open vulnerabilities that are not truly there, such as orphan files that are not really exploitable. It would be helpful if they were classified as information-only rather than Sev 4 or Sev 5.

I have been using Qualys Patch Management for a couple of months. We are a new customer for Qualys Patch Management. We are just onboarding it.

We have done a couple of PoCs for two to three months.

We have not experienced any downtime, glitches, or bugs, so I would rate its stability very high.

Qualys Patch Management appears to be dynamic. It should be able to scale with our needs as the organization grows.

I am still investigating this aspect. I have not had a need to open any tickets or cases.

Neutral

We previously used Ivanti. We switched to Qualys to simplify our toolset because we faced challenges bridging the gaps between what Qualys was identifying and what Ivanti was reporting. This change was made to reduce confusion and the effort involved in aligning two systems.

We already had the vulnerability management piece from Qualys, and we just added Patch Management.

The scanning piece has definitely reduced risks, and now, with Patch Management, we will be able to bridge the gap and see further reductions in risks.

Qualys vulnerability management is in the cloud, but with us turning on the Patch Management piece, it is probably going to be a hybrid setup. We will have a piece in the cloud and then some data collector pieces that will allow us to locally deploy patches versus having the machines go out on the Internet.

It is pretty straightforward. We are still in the process of onboarding. We are not done yet.

Seven people are currently involved in the implementation phase. Its usage will be global. Phase one is just our server management. We have about 2,100 servers. Our IT group has about 45 to 50 people.

Qualys Patch Management is expensive.

When we did our PoC, we already had the VMDR piece. We enabled the patch piece and brought the right hand and the left hand together. This integration automatically should include all the relevant patches and configuration changes required to remediate vulnerabilities detected by VMDR. It will be crucial. That is still to be determined, but when two of our critical service delivery organizations are using the same sheet of music or the same tool, it makes us more agile and more responsive to the threats we are trying to protect our business against.

I would rate Qualys Patch Management a nine out of ten.

Patch Management checks for new patches that Qualys updates daily. For example, Microsoft and other vendors release security updates, which we add to the asset register to simultaneously deploy them. 

Whenever we updated assets in the past, we used to connect to the Internet to download each one, so every asset used to connect individually to download the patch, consuming a lot of bandwidth. Qualys Gateway Scanner works well for us. QGS has all the patches and deploys them to the systems that need them. For example, if we need to update Adobe Acrobat, we can set up an Acrobat group with all the laptops that have the software and push it out. It previously used a lot of bandwidth to download the packages. Now, instead of downloading it thousands of times, we only need to download 10 to 20 packages.

Qualys enables us to identify vulnerabilities and patch them as quickly as possible. We can fix vulnerabilities without involving the security team using TruRisk. We did a POC of TruRisk, but we do not have the whole package yet. It shows us which assets are critical, so we can prioritize them.  

The integration of Qualys Gateway Scanner is my favorite feature. The patches are downloaded to QGS in our environment and deployed, saving bandwidth. The patch logging and policies have been helpful. The dashboard shows you when the patch has been applied to your assets. 

The patch model is critical. The solution classifies the vulnerabilities based on their severity and assigns an asset risk score, so I can focus on the critical ones first. The greater the score, the more vulnerable and risky the assets are. I can prioritize the assets directly from the UI. It doesn't take any skill to evaluate the risk. 

The VMDR feature is critical because I can permanently see the associated patch in my patch management model when I find a vulnerability. From there, deploying the patch on my assets is a short step. I don't need to do manual work.

There is room for improvement in terms of adding more patches. Not all patches are available for deployment on Qualys Patch Management, so collaborating with various vendors to provide new patches would be beneficial.

We have used Qualys for four years. 

I rate Qualys' stability eight out of 10. 

I rate Qualys eight out of 10. They're great. Customer service is responsive to feature requests. They'll add something if it's valuable and many users ask for it. 

Positive

We have used BigFix before, which was just a patching tool. You can push all patches through the case, but it doesn't have the same features or UI Qualys has. 

Deploying Qualys was slightly challenging due to the internal IT processes rather than any shortcomings from Qualys. It took us about two months. We had a team from both the security and IT departments involved in the deployment. Two or three people were from security, while approximately six were from the IT team, including networking and server teams.

Qualys is fairly priced. 

If Qualys can provide all patches and the ability to deploy custom patches, it would make them unbeatable.

Initially, we were using Qualys Patch Management for TruRisk vulnerability detections. I am on the risk operations side, so I also used it to determine ways to fix a particular vulnerability and address it.

I used Patch Management with Qualys VMDR when I was doing a proof of concept with Patch management. It works well. To me, it was just a shortcut or another way to patch a system versus doing it with the job, but it was straightforward.

We were able to realize its benefits immediately. Patch Management gave my side and the security side a single pane of glass and the ability to better coordinate the delivery of patches. After using it, I felt a lot more comfortable with it. 

TruRisk gives the confidence that we are attacking the major issues, but we do leverage our security team to make the final decision. It does help.

Patch Management gives us a single source of truth for assets and vulnerabilities that need to be assessed, prioritized, and remediated.

Currently, we are in a hybrid environment until we fully transition over. We have Ivanti and Qualys. They are two separate agents, two separate infrastructures. Moving to Qualys Patch Management gives us instant access to all of the systems we have. We do not have to worry about building up new infrastructure. We just go and start patching. It streamlines everything a lot, especially the dialogue between our teams, that is, the risk side versus the security side. It reduces confusion over patches.

Patch Management has definitely given us the opportunity to do more hands-off patching. Some in my team are manually pushing the patches out. We click a button, schedule it, and shoot it out. We are going to take advantage of zero-touch patching for browsers. We are going to do a lot more scheduled or agent-based patching. It will be hands-off. It will free us up to do more analytical things and spread ourselves out to other tasks.

Patch Management will help us reduce our organization's risk. We have not had the opportunity to start using it the way we want to. We are still early on, but just from what I see, I expect that it would have a significant impact on our ability to patch. Personally, I think the impact will be significant.

We recently got their Patch Management solution, which is the most important thing for me at this time. Previously, vulnerability detection was most valuable.

Patch Management's risk-based approach to creating automation to address risks is very important. I just came from the conference, and I understand it a lot more. It definitely is important. I like it a lot.

I would like a more clear distinction in terms of something I call a patch contract. A patch contract is a bundle of patches that we are going to roll out. I would like to reference those patches from separate jobs. They explained at a conference that it cannot be done, but that is my main complaint. I wish that the whole schema was a little bit clearer because there is a little bit of cloudiness around it. Everything else seems to be fairly straightforward.

Additionally, I know there is a cost associated with this, but it would be nice if instead of us having to roll and host our own custom files on AWS or something like that, Qualys could provide some space, even if just a gigabyte or 500 megabytes.

I have been using it for about a year or two.

Overall, I have not experienced any issues with Qualys as a whole, although the security team once mentioned something about the system being down. I will learn more as I get more and more into patching with it.

I have not yet contacted their support.

Neutral

Right now, we are using a mixture of security controls and endpoint management. I have used solutions like Ivanti, Altiris, Intune, and WSUS, among others. I have seen a lot of patch management solutions.

Ivanti is closest to Qualys. Both of them are built on the same Shavlik engine. Qualys is better for my situation because it is cloud-based. I do not have to worry about on-prem things I do right now. I am familiar with Patch Management because underneath it is the same Shavlik engine that is used by Ivanti. I am familiar with the log files and things like that.

That was the easiest thing to do. All the hard work had already been done. After the security team has the agents installed, we start working our magic. It does not get easier than that.

We have not yet fully deployed it, so I cannot say how long it takes to fully deploy it, but getting it established and started was quick.

From what I have heard, Qualys Patch Management is pricey, which is a main barrier to entry. Another aspect that I do not like about Qualys is that they do not add new patch management functionalities to the existing package. It is a separate SKU, so you have to pay more money.

I would rate Qualys Patch Management a nine out of ten.