Announcing a New Color Code for QDS, QVS, and TruRisk™ Score in Enhanced ETM UI
In risk operations, color is a control surface. When a security team is scanning hundreds or millions of exposures, the fastest decisions are the ones the interface makes obvious without forcing the brain to translate.
With Enterprise TruRisk Management (ETM) Release 1.6, Qualys introduced an enhanced user interface across ETM pages, bringing updates to typography, layout consistency, charts, and, most visibly, a new color coding for QDS, QVS, and the TruRisk™ Score.
As part of the ongoing ETM UI modernization, this blog takes a closer look at the TruRisk™ Score meter color scheme. It explains what changed, why it matters, and how to interpret the new score colors with confidence.
What’s New in ETM User Interface
The new interface is not a single “skin.” It is a design system refresh intended to improve visual consistency, readability, and usability across ETM pages. Qualys highlights improvements such as cleaner screens, easier-to-read text, less clutter, and faster comprehension of risk, status, and numbers. The principle is simple and intentional: Darker shades represent higher risk and higher urgency.
Key upgrades include:
- ALL CAPS replaced by sentence-style labels for improved readability
- Consistent text styling for statuses and source names
- Uniform text colors across tables, filters, page numbers, and tabs
- Aligned tab and navigation styling across the product
- Clear visual indicators for active, inactive, secondary buttons and options
- Better emphasis for important information, with subtle styling for the rest
For data-heavy pages where operators spend most of their time:
- Updated chart color schemes for clarity and accessibility
- Compact numeric formats for improved visibility
- Refined color gradients for risk scores and meters
That last bullet is where the new color code comes in.
New Color Code for QDS, QVS, and TruRisk™ Score
ETM Release 1.6 introduces a new color scheme that highlights criticality for:
- TruRisk™ Score
- Qualys Detection Score (QDS)
- Qualys Vulnerability Score (QVS)
- Asset Criticality Score (ACS)
The change can be summarized as follows:
- Previously, a different scheme was used to indicate criticality ranges.
- Now, new color shades within a similar theme are used to represent score ranges and criticality
- Darker shades represent higher scores that require greater attention
The goal is simple: help teams quickly identify and prioritize the most critical vulnerabilities.
The same updates appear in Qualys VMDR Release 2.8, reinforcing that this is a platform-wide standardization.
How to Interpret the New Colors
The rule is simple: Darker = higher criticality. Instead of shifting between unrelated hues, the UI maintains a consistent theme by progressively darkening shades within the same color family as risk increases. This allows you to instantly rank urgency, especially in list views, score meters, and anywhere TruRisk/QDS/QVS/ACS appear together. The result is reduced visual ambiguity and more immediate prioritization.
TruRisk™ Score Ranges (Criticality Bands)
Qualys uses the following TruRisk score ranges across reporting and UI context:
- Low: 0–499
- Medium: 500–699
- High: 700–849
- Critical: 850–1000
(These ranges also apply in VMDR for TruRisk score reporting and email notifications.)
The following table displays Low and Medium TruRisk scores, along with the corresponding color code changes.
Where You Will Notice the New Color Code in ETM
The enhanced UI applies across ETM, so the new scheme appears in the places that matter most operationally:
- Risk listing tables where QDS/QVS/TruRisk/ACS appear as values and chips
- Score meters and gradient-based visualizations used for interpretation
- Charts and metrics where color supports faster scanning and improved accessibility
Qualys has also refined color-coding behavior in TruRisk report emails, ensuring that critical-range TruRisk scores (850–1000) display the appropriate color code, consistent with other ranges.
Why This Matters
A risk platform lives and dies on minutes saved:
- Faster triage: Your eyes can rank urgency without reading every number.
- Fewer misreads: A consistent color theme reduces “what does this color mean here?” friction.
- Better prioritization at scale: The interface visually reinforces the criticality model.
- Consistency across products: ETM and VMDR align on the same criticality language and visual encoding.
What Hasn’t Changed
The update introduces a new color scheme to indicate and highlight criticality. It is part of a broader UI initiative spanning typography, buttons, tables, charts, and gradients, all aimed at making ETM easier to use. It does not change the underlying scoring logic in this release.
Your TruRisk Score ranges remain the same:
- Low: 0–499
- Medium: 500–699
- High: 700–849
- Critical: 850–1000
Your scoring logic has not changed. This is a visual enhancement, not a change to how TruRisk is calculated.
Risk Should be Obvious
ETM’s user interface direction is clear: less clutter, more signal. The new color code for QDS, QVS, TruRisk™, and ACS is a small change with a big operational payoff because when your queue is long, the most valuable feature is instant clarity.