Qualys’ library of built-in policies makes it easy to comply with the security standards and regulations that are most commonly used and adhered to. Qualys provides a wide range of policies, including many that have been certified by CIS as well as the ones based on security guidelines from OS and application vendors and other industry best practices.

In order to keep up with the latest changes in security control requirements and new technologies, Qualys publishes new content to the Policy Library every month.

The February release includes 8 CIS Benchmark policies, 4 Qualys Security Configuration and Compliance policies, and 1 mandate [MARS-Ev2] policy. Apart from adding a new technology support, it also provides updates to several existing policies in the Qualys Content Library.

Qualys’ Certification Page at CIS at CIS has been updated.

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For the February 2020 Patch Tuesday, Microsoft released security updates for Windows 7, 2008 and 2008 R2 systems which are already end of life. Qualys released Patch Tuesday detections (QIDs) which check for these new ESU patches as well.

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Detecting changes from a baseline established for files and file paths and receiving instant alerts about them is crucial to ensure security within a monitored environment. File tampering is an indicator of illicit activity, and authorized users must be alerted whenever changes in a critical file or file path occur. Hence, organizations must integrate file change monitoring into their continuous efforts towards maintaining safety and hygiene in the cyber security space, especially in environments where their IT systems contain highly sensitive data.

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This month’s Microsoft Patch Tuesday addresses 99 vulnerabilities with 12 of them labeled as Critical. Of the 12 Critical vulns, 7 are for browser and scripting engines, 2 are for Remote Desktop Client, and the remaining 3 are for LNK files, Media Foundation, and Windows. The IE 0-day disclosed in January is patched as part of the scripting engine fixes. Microsoft also issued a patch for an RCE in Exchange.

Adobe issued patches today for Experience Manager, Digital Editions, Flash Player, Acrobat/Reader, and Framemaker.

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Are you interested in exploring the profound impact of digital transformation on the security industry, and how that impact affects practitioners? Are you planning to be in San Francisco during #RSA Conference week?

If yes, join us at Qualys Security Conference 2020 San Francisco on February 25!

Here are the top 5 (other) reasons you should attend:

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Qualys Vulnerability Signature, version 2.4.815-2, will include EOL QIDs (detections for end-of-life software) for Windows 7, Windows 2008, and Windows 2008 R2. Customers will be able to scan the QIDs shown below using Qualys Vulnerability Management (VM):

QID 105859  – EOL/Obsolete Operating System: Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 Detected
QID 105858  – EOL/Obsolete Operating System: Microsoft Windows 2008 Detected
QID 105793  – EOL/Obsolete Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Detected

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Qualys is introducing the ability to download data from your vulnerability management dashboards. With Qualys Vulnerability Management Dashboards, you can use Qualys Query Language (QQL) to query the data in your subscription and build vulnerability- and asset-centric dashboards that show your exposure to individual vulnerabilities or groups of vulnerabilities or vulnerabilities with specific attributes, like new patch available found within the last 30 days.

With the new download feature, you can now download this data into a CSV file for additional manipulation outside the platform.

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Qualys Research Labs discovered a vulnerability in OpenBSD’s OpenSMTPD mail server that allows an attacker to execute arbitrary shell commands with elevated privileges. OpenBSD developers have confirmed the vulnerability and also quickly provided a patch.

Proof-of-concept exploits are published in the security advisory.

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This release of the Qualys Cloud Platform version 2.43 includes updates and new features for Web Application Scanning, highlights as follows.

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A vulnerability recently disclosed by Wordfence and published as CVE-2020-7047 and CVE-2020-7048 allows an attacker to take over vulnerable WordPress-based websites.

Functionality in the WP Database Reset plugin introduced the vulnerability, which allows any unauthenticated user to reset any table in the database to its initial state when it was installed, deleting all the content in the database.

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