Qualys Cloud Agent 1.3 New Features

Pronamika Abraham

Last updated on: June 3, 2020

Table of Contents

Qualys Cloud Agent enables instant, global visibility of IT assets – even occasionally connected mobile and virtual devices, with up-to-date asset configuration data for security and compliance. A low-footprint agent installed on endpoints, Cloud Agent brings the high-performance functionality of all Qualys Cloud Platform solutions to all IT assets in the global enterprise.

This release of the Qualys Cloud Agent Platform includes several new features for improving management of the Cloud Agent including:

  • New Information and Search Options in Agent Management – making it easier to find agents requiring attention.
  • Agent Network and Name Identification – allowing you to identify an asset by its unique network information and track all addresses associated with an agent.
  • New Capabilities for Activation Keys – allowing you to automate activation, licensed features, and dynamically tag new agents as they are registered.

Also related to this release is the Qualys AssetView Service – a new service that lets your company search for information across your entire environment, scaling to millions of assets for organizations of all sizes. Qualys AssetView provides search capabilities for multiple data sources in your environment, including data from: Free Inventory with Qualys Cloud Agent, optional VM or PC features of Cloud Agent, and also agentless scan sources.  This new capability replaces the Asset Management module in your account once enabled, and can be activated by contacting your Technical Account Manager or Technical Support.  For more information on Qualys AssetView – please visit the Qualys AssetView website: Qualys AssetView

We are in the process of rolling out the AssetView service and will be adding the feature to subscriptions over the next several weeks while we fine tune the search engine to provide the best performance.

Qualys Cloud Agent 1.3 will be released according to the following schedule.  For release notifications containing details specific to each platform and to subscribe to release notifications, please see the following:


New Information and Search Options in Agent Management

Show Tags in Cloud Agent UI – Tags have been added to a column in the Agents grid view to make it easier to see which tags are associated with various agents that are deployed in your environment.

Agent Management - Tags

Agent Management – Tags


New Search Features on Cloud Agent Tab – You can now search for agents in the search view using the following fields as filters: Agent ID, Activation for Modules (VM/PC), Agents with Errors, and Last Checked-In Date.

Agent Management - Search

Agent Management – Search


Show Agent Status/Agent Errors in Cloud Agent management – Agents with errors are now highlighted with a {symbol} allowing you to quickly identify agents that are reporting error conditions or have not recently checked in.  You can also apply a filter to view only agents that currently have an error condition.  This will make it easier to identify systems that are having connectivity issues, been disabled, or have been offline for a

significant period of time.

Agent Management - Errors

Agent Management – Errors


Agent Network and Name Identification

Use NetBiosName and DnsHostName for identifying assets – Agents now capture the NetBiosName and DnsHostName attributes to provide additional host information in VM for identifying unique agents.  This information is now leveraged and displayed for each agent in the Agent Management system instead of the Public IP Address.  The Public IP Address is still captured and retained in the asset inventory data, and we are now also collecting all of the interface details and related IPv4/IPv6/MAC address details for each agent.  A new tab has been added in the Asset information for each agent, and new report template options have been added to the VM Scan Report to optionally include the various identifying information on that report.

For more details on the new VM Scan Report Template, look for the Qualys Suite 8.6 New Features blog entry in Qualys Technology.

Agent Management - ID

Agent Management – ID

Agent Management - Network

Agent Management – Network


New Capabilities for Activation Keys

Activate Licensed Features (VM/PC) by Activation Key – You can now associate optional features (such as Vulnerability Management or Policy Compliance)

with an activation key.  Upon activation, the VM or PC features will automatically be enabled for those systems and license counts will be updated

accordingly.  You can use limits on your Activation Keys to limit the number of licenses that can be used by different departments by creating specific

keys for each group.

New Key - Provisioning

New Key Provisioning


Customizable Title for Activation Key – You can now provide a title for your activation keys to make it easier to remember what that key was intended for.  For example, you might want to create an Activation Key for your Critical Servers that leverages PC and VM, while using a separate key for your Workstation and Laptop environments that utilizes VM only.

Activation Key - Title

Activation Key – Title

Activation Key Management

Activation Key Management


Tag by Activation Key – You can now associate one or more tags with an Activation Key.  When an agent is activated leveraging the Activation Key, it will be associated with any tags assigned to that key.  You can use this feature to easily identify assets for different purposes – for example, you may provide a special Activation Key to the system adminsitrators of your critical external facing servers.  Those servers can immediately be

identified upon activation, making it easier to find those servers for different reports and dashboards.

Activation Key - Tags

Activation Key – Tags


Show Agent Count and Agents Associated with Activation Key – You can now view how many agents have been used for a specific Activation Key on the

Activation Keys administration tab.  When viewing the activation key, you can see the specific agents that are currently tied to that Activation Key.

You can also leverage the Tag feature mentioned above to easily search for sets of assets associated with a specific Activation Key.

Activation Key Management - Agent Counts

Activation Key Management – Agent Counts


Moving Agents to New Activation ID – License Handling – When you reinstall an agent leveraging a different Activation Key, if you are limiting the key to a specific number of agents, the old key’s utilized agent count will be incremented, while the new key will be decremented.  This allows you to reallocate agents to a different key while maintaining accurate use counts for each key.


Release Schedule

Share your Comments

Comments

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *