Tools & Technology

Qualys vs Rapid7 for Vulnerability Management

Top cybersecurity companies like Rapid7 and Qualys offer excellent vulnerability management tools. Rapid7 has InsightVM and Nexpose, while Qualys offers tools like Qualys VMDR, Qualys Policy Compliance, and Qualys Web Application Scanning. In this article, we’ll dive into these tools, discussing their features, pros and cons, who they’re best for, and other alternatives you might consider.

Qualys VMDR

Qualys Vulnerability Management, Detection, and Response (VMDR) is an integrated cybersecurity solution developed by Qualys Inc. designed to provide comprehensive visibility and control over an organization's IT environment. VMDR streamlines the entire vulnerability management lifecycle—from asset discovery and assessment to prioritization and remediation—ensuring that security teams can efficiently manage and mitigate risks.

Features

Comprehensive Asset Discovery:

Qualys VDMR identifies all assets, including those from mergers, acquisitions, and subsidiaries, and attributes them to specific business areas.
It automatically discovers and inventory all assets within the network, including physical, virtual, cloud-based, and containerized environments. This ensures no device is overlooked and maintains a dynamic, real-time inventory of all assets.

Risk Prioritization with TruRisk™:

Qualys VDMR tags and assigns criticality scores to assets and asset groups according to industry, compliance, or operational needs. This approach saves analysis time, reduces Mean Time to Remediation (MTTR), and improves cyber risk exposure and reporting.

Continuous CMDB Updates:

It continuously updates your Configuration Management Database (CMDB) to maintain a complete inventory of internal and external assets. This includes cyber risk contexts such as End-of-Life (EoL)/End-of-Service (EoS) statuses, expired SSL certificates, and missing security agents.
It automatically assigns tickets with 96% accuracy based on Qualys tags.

Enhanced Asset Discovery:

Qualys VDMR discovers assets from sources like ServiceNow, BMC Helix, Active Directory, Webhook, and more to enhance coverage and business context. It extracts data such as asset criticality, device ownership, and assigned support groups to drive risk prioritization.

Compliance Management:

It generates reports to help organizations comply with various regulatory standards such as PCI-DSS, HIPAA, GDPR, and more
It also facilitates compliance by maintaining up-to-date and comprehensive asset inventories.

Efficient Workflow Integration:

Qualys VDMR adds previously unknown assets to your VM, web application scanning, and patch jobs with a single click. It leverages out-of-the-box integrations with IT and SecOps tools to streamline workflows and produce executive-level risk reports.

Tech Debt Management:

It decreases the attack surface by identifying outdated or unsupported applications, missing required software, and unauthorized software.
It also proactively manages technology debt to reduce vulnerabilities and improve security posture.

Real-Time Device Identification:

Qualys VDMR identifies unmanaged devices connected to your network in real time, including IoT and rogue devices.
It also quickly incorporates these devices into your VM program for comprehensive risk assessment.

Pricing

Qualys VDMR charges between 128 - $542 per month depending on the package.

Pros

Scheduled Scans for Proactive Security: Qualys VMDR offers scheduled scans that enable proactive monitoring of IT assets for vulnerabilities. This allows organizations to avoid potential threats by regularly assessing their security posture.
Comprehensive Security Visibility: Customers benefit from comprehensive visibility across their IT assets, including servers, workstations, network devices, and applications. This visibility helps identify vulnerabilities across the entire infrastructure, reducing blind spots, and enhancing overall security.
Real-Time Threat Detection and Response: With real-time threat detection capabilities, Qualys VMDR enables organizations to detect and respond to emerging threats swiftly. This proactive approach minimizes the impact of vulnerabilities and strengthens the organization's defense against cyberattacks.
Simplified Compliance Management: Automated reporting and streamlined compliance processes ease the burden of regulatory requirements. Qualys VMDR helps in maintaining compliance with standards such as PCI DSS, HIPAA, and GDPR, ensuring adherence through automated assessments and reporting.

Cons

Additional Tools Required for Complete Vulnerability Management: While Qualys VMDR provides robust vulnerability assessment capabilities, organizations may need additional tools for comprehensive vulnerability management, such as dedicated patch management solutions. This can add complexity and extra cost to the security.
High Cost: The investment in licensing and infrastructure may require careful consideration and budget planning as many modules need to be licensed to provide comprehensive management. The initial cost and ongoing maintenance of Qualys VMDR can be expensive, especially for smaller organizations or those with limited budgets.
Complexity Managing and configuring: Qualys VMDR can be complex, particularly for organizations without dedicated cybersecurity expertise. Scheduling and fine-tuning scanning policies and remediation workflows may require specialized knowledge and training.
Slow: In some cases, the scanning and reporting processes of Qualys VMDR may be perceived as being slow, especially when dealing with large-scale environments or complex IT infrastructures. This can impact the timeliness of vulnerability assessments and remediation efforts.
Limited Integration: Although Qualys VMDR integrates with various IT and security tools, some consumers have complained that the depth of integration with specific platforms or custom solutions may need to be improved. This could potentially hinder seamless adoption.

InsightVM

InsightVM is a new vulnerability management tool with the extended capabilities of Nexpose, a previous tool owned by Rapid7. This new tool includes real-time visibility into vulnerabilities and guides the remedies likely to reduce risk.

Features:

Lightweight Endpoint Agent and Easy-to-Use RESTful API:

InsightVM uses an Insight endpoint agent to unify data across different Rapid7 products for continuous and effective monitoring, vulnerability assessment, and log collection. These products include InsightIDR and InsightOps.
The tool also employs its agent to gather data from all endpoints, including devices with internet access, devices of remote workers, and hard-to-scan assets.
It helps to provide in-depth scanning without the need to manage credentials and can be easily installed on Windows, Linux, and Mac devices, allowing updates to operate automatically without additional configuration.
InsightVM's RESTful API is designed to give users total control over their Security Console, allowing easy introduction, operation, and integration of vulnerability management tasks.

Live Dashboard:

InsightVM's live dashboard shows real-time and interactive views of your network risk.
It allows you to create and adjust the dashboard to display fresh vulnerability data. You can add and remove cards (visual components) as needed to get the precise insight you require.
The dashboard updates in real-time, reflecting scans, agents, and nearby discovery networks and connections. It offers team members the opportunity to collaborate and share the dashboard.

Active Risk Score:

InsightVM scans and collects data, combining the information gathered from various threat intelligence sources, including Rapid7's research, to identify possible threats and prioritize vulnerabilities that are likely to be exploited.
It utilizes a scale of 1-1000 to prioritize vulnerabilities based on their risk of being exploited rather than their CVSS score alone.

Integrated Threat Feed and Remediation Projects:

InsightVM's integrated threat feed helps to prioritize vulnerabilities that are actively targeted by attackers, filtering out the highly critical ones from the less critical ones.
It enables users to respond quickly and prioritize critical vulnerabilities according to their high risks. It also allows users to assign remediation tasks and monitor them in real-time, ensuring continuous visibility into progress.
Integrating ticketing systems like Atlassian Jira and ServiceNow helps to incorporate remediation into daily IT workflows.
It also tracks the efficiency of remediation, past-due projects, incomplete tasks, and more via customizable dashboards, thereby highlighting the most effective remediators and measuring program success.

Policy Assessment

The InsightVM tool provides built-in templates for common compliance requirements like CIS, HIPAA, SCADA, and PCI. It also collaborates with Coalfire to deliver official PCI Reports for external compliance needs.

Pricing

Rapid7 charges $1.93 per asset per month for the InsightVM product when up to 500 assets are being managed.

Pros

Continuous Monitoring for Real-Time Visibility: The continuous monitoring feature of the InsightVM product is one of its most appreciated features. It provides real-time visibility into your network, allowing you to foresee potential threats by identifying and recognizing vulnerabilities as they emerge. This enables immediate action to protect your systems.
Advanced Risk-Based Prioritization: InsightVM excels in risk-based prioritization, helping users focus on the most critical and exposed vulnerabilities first. This prioritization is based on an extensive and detailed 1-1000 assessment scale of the network’s risk profile, ensuring proper and efficient allocation of resources to mitigate the most significant threats.
Detailed Remediation Steps and Tracking: A significant benefit for customers is InsightVM's comprehensive remediation guidance and tracking capabilities. The platform not only identifies vulnerabilities but also provides step-by-step remediation plans and instructions, making it simpler for teams to address issues efficiently. Additionally, the tracking feature aids in monitoring the progress of remediation efforts, ensuring nothing falls through the cracks.

Cons

Higher Cost Compared to Some Competitors: Cost is a notable drawback of InsightVM; it can be very expensive. This is particularly concerning for budget-conscious organizations, especially smaller companies or those with limited security budgets.
Complexity: InsightVM can be quite challenging to manage, especially for smaller organizations with fewer security personnel. The comprehensive features and functionalities require a certain level of expertise to be managed effectively, which most small-scale companies lack. This increases the necessity for additional training or support.
High False Positive Rate: A higher incidence of false positives has been reported by customers. This means the system might sometimes flag non-critical issues as vulnerabilities, leading to unnecessary remediation efforts and distractions from more important security concerns.
Cumbersome and Unintuitive UI: Another setback of this tool is the user interface. Some users find it cumbersome and not very intuitive. This can result in a steeper and more challenging learning curve and may slow down the efficiency of the team as they navigate and use the platform.

Ideal Users for InsightVM

Large organizations and enterprises with complex IT environments.
Security-conscious organizations that need regular monitoring.
Companies with significant cloud infrastructure.

CONCLUSION

Qualys VMDR and InsightVM are strong in vulnerability scanning, maybe one of the best in the market but their remediation capabilities fall short for organizations needing a comprehensive solution. As a result, these organizations often need to buy additional tools for remediation. Vicarius vRx fills this gap with a unique focus on remediation, providing a unified solution for Vulnerability Management.

About vRx

vRx is an all-in-one vulnerability management tool. It focuses on proactive vulnerability assessment and remediation without relying solely on traditional patching.

Why vRx?

vRx provides comprehensive vulnerability management by integrating assessment, prioritization, and remediation tools into a single platform.
It features a user-friendly interface designed to be intuitive and easy to navigate, catering to users of all skill levels.
The platform offers continuous monitoring, ensuring real-time assessment of vulnerabilities without the need for scheduled scans.
vRx employs proactive security measures such as vulnerability prediction and patchless protection to mitigate threats before they become known.
It supports both automated and manual remediation, allowing organizations to install prioritized updates across operating systems and applications as needed.
Advanced risk-scoring capabilities combine contextual data with external sources to provide accurate CVSS calculations for each threat, including applications.
vRx's Patchless Protection tool rapidly secures high-risk applications and blocks incoming exploitation attempts, enhancing overall security posture.
By mitigating vulnerabilities without immediate patches, vRx reduces downtime and operational disruptions associated with traditional patching methods.
It seamlessly integrates with existing IT infrastructures and security tools, ensuring compatibility and enhancing the overall security ecosystem.
Automation of vulnerability management processes optimizes resource allocation and improves cost efficiency for organizations.
vRx helps organizations maintain regulatory compliance by effectively managing vulnerabilities and providing audit-ready documentation.
Vicarius also has a community-driven platform called vsociety that focuses on sharing knowledge, tools, and best practices related to cybersecurity and vulnerability management