Qualys Recommended Option Profile Release Updates 

Qualys has introduced significant improvements to our Option Profiles in our recent releases as notified in our previous blog linked here. The final stage is to change the default ports.  

By mid-January 2025, the Qualys Recommended Option Profile setting changes were implemented for all shared Qualys Cloud Platforms. 
The standard TCP Port change from 1,900 to 2,800 was deployed to all shared Qualys Cloud Platforms by the third week of March 2025. This change will be applied to all scans that run, regardless of when the option profile was created.

What are these significant changes? 

• Expanding “Standard TCP Ports” scanned from 1,900 to 2,800 
• Extending “Additional TCP Ports” from 12,500 to 20,500 

What are the benefits that customers can expect here? 

• Improved scan coverage and vulnerability detection 
• Significantly faster scan completion times 
• Alignment with PCI DSS v4.0 requirements for authenticated scans 
• Reduced false positives and negatives 
• Streamlined option profile creation process 

Qualys team earlier posted a notification as “Qualys Recommended Option Profile – Upcoming Important Changes”; request all customers refer to this for more additional details. 

Reference Links

• Qualys Recommended Option Profile – Upcoming Important Changes 
• Qualys Cloud Platform Release Notes 
• Option Profiles for VM/VMDR 
• Option Profile Guide 
• Qualys VMDR Release Notes 
• Get Started with VMDR 
• Qualys VMDR Solution Brief 

Contributors 

• Kevin O’Keefe, Senior Security Solutions Architect