Qualys Announces Recertification of its Cloud Computing FDCC Auditing Service

The leading provider of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) IT security risk and compliance management solutions, Qualys (News - Alert), Inc., announced that National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has recertified QualysGuard for FDCC compliance as it conforms to  the Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP) and its component standards. The QualysGuard FDCC service enables the federal agencies to scan and even across large, distributed and operationally diverse networks and report FDCC compliance with an easy-to-use, centralized, integrated solution, at a low cost.

In a press release, Philippe Courtot, chairman and CEO, Qualys, said, “FDCC compliance requires a thorough analysis of all desktop environments. The Qualys Guard FDCC service is a scalable solution that provides the automation to accomplish this task efficiently and cost effectively agency-wide.”

The Federal agencies standardize and certify their existing Windows XP and Windows Vista desktops according to FDCC specifications as mandated by the US Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The FDCC service gives an upper hand to the SaaS architecture to support FDCC scanning for internal systems on a global scale to help federal agencies.

John Pescatore (News - Alert), VP and distinguished analyst at Gartner Inc, said, “One of the best ways for government agencies to avoid security incidents is to make sure that all PCs and servers are running on secure configurations. Vulnerability management processes that continually detect deviance from FDCC and USGCB to support rapid remediation are key to effective security configuration management.”

Qualys was recently in news when it announced its Security-as-a-Service platform to host the QualysGuard IT security and compliance Software-as-a-Service suite of applications in the cloud. The new Qualys security-as-a-service platform offers an integrated framework with new functionality in all Qualys security and compliance applications. The integration benefits of the new platform will touch all security and compliance applications hosted by the platform, company officials said. With the new platform, users will get job management, modular services to ensure highest uptime and performance, dynamic analysis and reporting capability, and support for physical and virtual appliances – from Qualys or deployment by other cloud solution providers.

Sujata Garud is a TMCnet freelancer with three years of writing/editing experience and two years of market research experience. As an editor she has covered the IT, electronics, banking, pharma, construction, mining and healthcare industries. To see more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Rich Steeves