Cloud Computing


TMCnews Featured Article


February 16, 2011

Virtualized Software-Based Scanner Appliances Introduced by Qualys

By Calvin Azuri, TMCnet Contributor


Virtualized software-based scanner appliances for its QualysGuard Software-as-a-Service or SaaS (News - Alert) IT security and compliance platform have been introduced by Qualys, Inc. in an announcement made by Qualys at RSA (News - Alert) Conference USA 2011. Qualys is a top provider of on demand IT security risk and compliance management solutions.

Running under common virtualization engines like VMware, Xen and Hyper-V, the new appliances will supplement the current hardware-based QualysGuard Scanner Appliance. Thousands of organizations worldwide are using the QualysGuard Scanner Appliance. The virtual scanners can be managed by customers from their QualysGuard accounts via a secure web interface.

Different computing environments will be supported by the QualysGuard software-based virtual scanners. Elastic Compute Cloud or EC2 target systems within the Amazon cloud can be scanned with Amazon EC2 version. Virtual Private Cloud or VPC target systems within a customer’s VPC environment in the Amazon cloud can be scanned with Amazon VPC version.

Consultants will be able to scan their clients during engagements with the Consultant version. This will run on the consultant’s laptop and has to be used with VMware Workstation/Player. Enterprise networks can be scanned with the Enterprise version. Integrated with centralized management systems, this version is intended for data centers.

In a release, Philippe Courtot, chairman and CEO of Qualys (News - Alert) said, “Enterprises are now streamlining their computing infrastructures by consolidating and virtualizing 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.”

Courtot added that in order to adjust to these new requirements, enterprise software vendors will need to rebuild their offerings. The required functionality can be now provided by Qualys by delivering its scanners as virtualized software. There will be no need to re-architect the applications that manage them. 

Calvin Azuri is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Calvin’s articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Jennifer Russell