Navigating the EU NIS2 Directive
How Qualys Cybersecurity Solutions Ensure Compliance
The European Union’s revised Network and Information Security (NIS2) Directive is a comprehensive cybersecurity regulation aimed at bolstering the resilience of critical entities and essential services across the EU. As organizations grapple with the complexities of compliance, Qualys offers a suite of powerful cybersecurity solutions that can help streamline the process and ensure adherence to NIS2 requirements.
The NIS2 Directive expands upon its predecessor, NIS1, by widening the scope of covered entities and introducing more stringent cybersecurity obligations. The directive applies to essential and important entities, including those in sectors such as energy, transport, banking, healthcare, and digital infrastructure. Key requirements under NIS2 include:
1. Implementing robust cybersecurity risk management measures
2. Reporting significant incidents to authorities within strict timelines
3. Ensuring the security of supply chains and supplier relationships
4. Conducting regular cybersecurity audits and assessments
Penalties for non-compliance include fines of up to €10,000,000 or 2% of a firm’s total annual worldwide turnover (revenue).
Qualys Solutions for NIS2 Compliance
The Qualys Enterprise TruRisk Platform offers a suite of cloud-based cybersecurity solutions that can help organizations comply with the NIS2 requirements and avoid audit failures, fines, brand damage, and litigation. These solutions include:
Vulnerability Management Detection and Response (VMDR)
Qualys VMDR enables organizations to proactively identify and remediate vulnerabilities across their entire IT infrastructure. With continuous asset discovery, automated scanning, and intelligent prioritization, Qualys VMDR provides a clear view of an organization’s risk posture. This aligns with NIS2’s emphasis on implementing appropriate technical and organizational measures to manage risks effectively.
VMDR addresses the need for regularly testing CDE systems and network security and excels at detecting internal and external risks and efficiently responding to vulnerabilities. Unlike other scanners, it performs authenticated scans, such as for certificate inventory.
Qualys VMDR measures risks 6x faster than competitive VM platforms, communicates risks from 200K+ vulnerabilities sourced from 25+ threat intelligence feeds, and eliminates critical risks 60 percent faster with a one-click workflow and ITSM integrations.
CyberSecurity Asset Management (CSAM)
Effective cybersecurity starts with a clear understanding of an organization’s asset inventory. Qualys CSAM provides a unified view of all IT assets, helping organizations maintain an accurate and up-to-date inventory, a crucial aspect of NIS2 compliance. CSAM provides an accurate, context-rich inventory of all CDE cyber assets to identify security gaps and full visibility and control of the CDE’s external attack surface.
Qualys CSAM improves asset coverage by 30 percent or more to turbocharge risk-based vulnerability management, proactively manages EoL/EoS up to twelve months in advance to avoid un-patchable vulnerabilities, and maps remediation tickets with 96 percent accuracy with bi-directional CMDB sync to unify IT and security teams.
File Integrity Monitoring (FIM)
Qualys FIM detects unauthorized changes to critical system files, directories, and configurations. This solution supports NIS2’s emphasis on promptly detecting and responding to cybersecurity incidents. FIM can identify illicit activities across critical system files and registries, diagnose changes, and send alerts. Qualys FIM includes unique noise cancellation to reduce false alerts by 90 percent or more and avoid audit failures by ignoring indicators of compromise (IOCs). FIM provides “low-noise” CDE integrity monitoring efforts and compliance, including for unauthorized modification and change detection, that accurately separates false alerts from positive hits and allows for whitelisting.
File Access Monitoring (FAM) is now included with Qualys FIM and is a security practice that involves tracking and logging access to sensitive files. FAM triggers alerts when critical host files, not intended for regular use, are accessed.
Qualys also offers agentless FIM, including FIM for network devices like JuniperOS, Arista, and Palo Alto. This capability triggers alerts that precisely pinpoint the differences in network configurations during routine scan intervals, offering detailed insights into what changed in the configuration.
Timely patching is crucial to mitigating cyber risks. Qualys Patch Management streamlines the patch deployment process, ensuring that critical vulnerabilities are addressed promptly. By automating patch management, organizations can maintain a strong security posture and demonstrate compliance with NIS2’s requirement for regularly updating and patching systems.
Qualys Patch Management enables automating of the entire patching process for operating systems, mobile devices, and third-party applications – even for remote devices.
Qualys Policy Compliance (PC) allows organizations to assess their adherence to NIS2 requirements continuously. By automating compliance assessments and providing real-time visibility into security controls, Qualys PC helps businesses identify and address gaps in their compliance posture. This proactive approach ensures that organizations remain compliant with NIS2 and can demonstrate their commitment to cybersecurity best practices.
Qualys PC offers over 1,000 policies, 22,000 controls, 400 technologies, and 100 regulations for compliance. For cybersecurity, it also helps you gain up to 81 percent coverage against MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques compared to only 53 percent with Vulnerability Management alone. Misconfigurations account for most security breaches. Now, you can simplify, expand, and automate compliance for the latest mandates while increasing your security hardening score to 79 percent compared to only 51 percent with other solutions.
Qualys PC provides support for different in-scope operating systems, databases, web servers, devices, and so forth. It also simplifies and accelerates formal assessments, including the automatic generation of compliance reports. The ability to create custom dashboards and reports ensures an always audit-ready status should an auditor require something non-standard.
Qualys Endpoint Security provides real-time protection against malware, ransomware, and other endpoint threats. This solution supports NIS2’s emphasis on implementing effective cybersecurity measures to protect essential services. Qualys Endpoint Security integrates vulnerability management of the CDE with endpoint threat detection and response. Qualys Endpoint Security goes beyond the endpoint protection silo by empowering security teams to reduce risks and eliminate alert fatigue. Qualys Endpoint Security monitors endpoints to detect suspicious activity in real time, hunt for sophisticated threat actors across your environment, and act quickly with automated response workflows.
Qualys Endpoint Security protects systems from malware and other forms of attack with multi-layered prevention, including mature and well-trained machine learning and behavior-based blocking, memory protection, network attack defense, and anti-phishing protection. Qualys Endpoint Security also prevents malware from encrypting personal or sensitive data, keeping your organization safe. Automatically create a backup of target files that are restored after the malware is blocked. Device control is included to stop malware and leakage of sensitive data via attached devices such as USB flash drives, Bluetooth devices, and other storage devices.
Remediation is a weakness for many endpoint security solutions. Qualys PC now includes tight integration with Qualys Endpoint Security, allowing you to automatically remediate threats discovered in endpoint security with Policy Compliance. Automatic Incident Prioritization, Visualization, and Root Cause Analysis in Qualys PC allow security administrators to focus on the most important activities. Threat forensics and remote shell are included for thorough endpoint investigations.
Qualys Web Application Scanning (WAS)
Qualys WAS identifies vulnerabilities in web applications, helping organizations secure their digital services as required by NIS2. WAS continuously detects vulnerabilities and misconfigurations of CDE internal and external-facing web applications. This app finds malware in web apps and informs DevOps teams about exposed payment data and other sensitive information.
Qualys TotalCloud offers a unified dashboard for managing cybersecurity across hybrid IT environments. This centralized visibility and control aligns with NIS2’s requirements for effective cybersecurity governance and risk management. TotalCloud measures risk with 360-degree scanning to detect vulnerabilities, detects malware with up to 99 percent accuracy thanks to AI-powered deep learning threat detection, and protects cloud infrastructure & SaaS apps up to 85 percent faster with a unified, prioritized view of risks.
Security Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ)
NIS2 emphasizes the importance of managing risks associated with the supply chain and third-party services. Qualys Security Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ) enables organizations to assess and monitor the security posture of their vendors and partners. By automating the collection and analysis of third-party security data, Qualys SAQ helps businesses mitigate supply chain risks and ensure compliance with NIS2’s requirements for secure procurement and third-party management.
Qualys Solutions Mapped to NIS2 Compliance Requirements
Below is an overview of how Qualys’ solutions map to the NIS2 Directive.
1. Risk Management and Incident Reporting (Articles 18 and 20):
– Qualys Vulnerability Management (VM) helps organizations identify, prioritize, and remediate vulnerabilities in their IT infrastructure, enabling them to manage and mitigate risks effectively.
– Qualys Enterprise TruRisk Platform provides real-time threat intelligence and automated response capabilities, helping organizations detect and respond to cybersecurity incidents promptly.
– Qualys Security Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ) allows organizations to assess their cybersecurity posture against industry standards and regulations, including NIS2, facilitating risk assessment and compliance reporting.
2. Cybersecurity Measures (Article 18):
– Qualys TotalCloud enables continuous monitoring of cloud assets, ensuring that cybersecurity measures are consistently enforced across the organization.
– Qualys Policy Compliance (PC) helps organizations define, assess, and enforce cybersecurity policies and configurations, ensuring adherence to NIS2 requirements.
– Qualys Web Application Scanning (WAS) identifies vulnerabilities in web applications, helping organizations secure their digital services as required by NIS2.
– Qualys File Integrity Monitoring (FIM) detects unauthorized changes to critical system files, directories, and configurations. This solution supports NIS2’s emphasis on promptly detecting and responding to cybersecurity incidents.
3. Supply Chain Security (Article 18):
– Qualys Patch Management (PM) automates the patch management process, helping organizations promptly address vulnerabilities in their supply chain software and systems.
– Qualys File Integrity Monitoring (FIM) detects unauthorized changes to critical system files, directories, and configurations that may have been changed by third parties in the supply chain.
– Qualys Policy Compliance (PC) helps organizations define, assess, and enforce cybersecurity policies and configurations, ensuring adherence to NIS2 requirements.
4. Incident Response and Crisis Management (Article 20):
– Qualys Enterprise TruRisk Platform provides a centralized solution for managing cybersecurity incidents, enabling organizations to respond effectively and minimize the impact of incidents, as required by NIS2.
– Qualys Endpoint Security provides real-time incident response and protection against malware, ransomware, and other endpoint threats.
– Qualys Policy Compliance (PC) now includes tight integration with Qualys EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response), allowing you to automatically remediate threats discovered in EDR with PC.
5. Information Sharing and Cooperation (Article 26):
– Qualys Enterprise TruRisk Platform facilitates secure information sharing and collaboration among organizations, enabling them to exchange threat intelligence and best practices, as encouraged by NIS2.
– Qualys API and integrations allow organizations to integrate Qualys solutions with their existing security tools and platforms, enabling seamless information sharing and cooperation.
Conclusion
The European Union’s revised Network and Information Security (NIS2) Directive has come into force, setting a new benchmark for cybersecurity standards across the EU. This directive aims to bolster the resilience of critical entities and digital service providers against evolving cyber threats. As organizations grapple with the complexities of compliance, Qualys emerges as a trusted partner, offering comprehensive cybersecurity solutions tailored to meet the stringent requirements of NIS2.
The EU NIS2 Directive sets a high standard for cybersecurity resilience, but with the right solutions and approach, compliance is achievable. The Qualys Enterprise TruRisk Platform, with its comprehensive suite of cybersecurity apps, provides organizations with the capabilities needed to meet NIS2 requirements effectively. By leveraging our expertise and innovative technologies, essential and important entities can navigate the complexities of NIS2 compliance with confidence, ensuring the security and resilience of their critical services.
For more information and to start your free trial, visit Qualys.com.