Unlock the Boardroom with Cyber Risk: How the Qualys Enterprise TruRisk™ Platform Empowers CISOs

The Changing Landscape for CISOs

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” – Peter Drucker

This timeless adage by Drucker resonates deeply in today’s digital era, where managing cyber risks has become a business-critical priority. According to a recent survey from Splunk, Today, nearly 50% of CISOs report directly to their CEOs, and over 90% regularly brief their Boards of Directors about their organization’s exposure to cyber risk. As the cost of successful cyberattacks continues to soar, reducing cyber risk has never been more critical. Moreover, it’s not just corporate leaders paying attention; Wall Street shareholders are also concerned about cyber risk and are keen to understand how companies address it. As reported by GlobalData, mentions of “cybersecurity” in public earnings calls have surged, averaging 800 per quarter.

So, with heightened interest and scrutiny on cybersecurity programs, what keeps CISOs awake in 2025?

The Challenges of Cyber Risk Management

During Qualys’ recent Strategic Advisory Board meetings, CISOs highlighted the necessity of communicating risk in business language, fostering trust among executive leadership, and allocating budget and resources based on critical business risk.

The following were the most notable challenges:

• Limited Asset Visibility—According to  ESG research, organizations spend more than 80 hours each month attempting to track unknown assets. Even more concerning, nearly 70% of organizations have reported experiencing attacks on unknown assets. In 2025, all organizations are expected to innovate in the cloud and deploy large language models (LLMs), further complicating the visibility of their attack surface.
• Siloed tools and teams — Many enterprises struggle with siloed tools and teams, often leading to a fragmented understanding of cyber risk. According to the Panaseer Survey, organizations rely on an average of over 70 security tools, creating a complex landscape of risk signals. For CISOs, the challenge lies in consolidating these diverse risk signals into a cohesive view.
• No financial context – CISOs regularly report to the board, but there’s only one language that truly resonates in the boardroom: MONEY. Metrics like the top 10 dashboards or the “number of patches deployed” don’t provide the necessary insights for leadership sleep at night. They want to know the likelihood of an attack, how much that attack would cost, and how much it will cost to reduce the risk.

Nearly 18 months ago, Qualys announced the Enterprise TruRisk™ Platform designed to “De-risk your business.” The platform provides you with a unified view of your entire cyber risk posture and scales for use cases across security disciplines to help everyone—from the analyst to the CISO— to efficiently aggregate and measure all Qualys & non-Qualys risk factors in a unified view, communicate cyber risk with context to your business, and go beyond patching to eliminate the risk that threatens business in any area of your attack surface.

Visibility, cyber risk context, financial implications, and, of course, business continuity are all at the top of mind in 2025. So, let’s review the Enterprise TruRisk™ Platform’s approach to addressing these challenges.

How the Qualys Enterprise TruRisk™ Platform Transforms Cyber Risk Management

Innovation is a foundational principle at Qualys, and we hope you’ve noticed the remarkable transformation the Qualys platform has undergone over the past 18 months. With the release of Qualys Cloud Platform 10.32.0.0-1, the platform will now be branded as the Qualys Enterprise TruRisk™ Platform within the Qualys UI. This marks a bold step forward and underscores our unwavering commitment to empowering CISOs, cybersecurity practitioners, and risk stakeholders to gain a comprehensive, unified view of their cyber risk posture—enhanced by actionable insights to drive effective decision-making.

Unmatched Asset Visibility Across Your Entire Attack Surface

Starting your journey with Qualys grants you exceptional visibility into your asset landscape, including asset groups, domains, misconfigurations, and software. This data integrates seamlessly into your Configuration Management Database (CMDB) for accurate and automated asset inventories.

Qualys Passive Sensors can map your internal attack surface to identify asset lifecycles and unauthorized software. Qualys also offers an external attack surface view, discovering 30% more enterprise assets from mergers, acquisitions, and subsidiaries. You can proactively manage End-of-Life (EoL) and End-of-Support (EoS) for your infrastructure up to 12 months in advance.

Rapid Vulnerability Detection to Mitigate Cyber Risk

Qualys Vulnerability Management Detection and Response (VMDR) detects zero-day threats up to six times faster than other vulnerability management tools, significantly reducing cyber risks with an impressive Six Sigma accuracy rate. It covers 200k+ vulnerabilities and effectively maps them to the appropriate patches. This allows organizations to prioritize critical risks and streamline the remediation process, resulting in response times that are 40% faster. The platform provides clear strategies for effective risk mitigation.

Access to Extensive Threat Intelligence with TruRisk™ Score

The TruRisk™ score takes a comprehensive approach to cyber risk management, addressing the diverse and complex nature of risks, including vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and threats. It also incorporates essential business context, such as asset criticality, to quantify overall risk.

Powered by 25+ threat intelligence feeds and advanced algorithms, the TruRisk™ score analyzes a wide range of factors to generate an actionable risk score. By effectively linking technical vulnerabilities to business implications, the TruRisk™ score enables organizations to gain a clearer understanding of their security posture and take informed actions to strengthen their defenses.

Business-Focused Risk Reduction

Qualys offers a robust risk reduction solution integrating patch management, mitigation, and isolation strategies to proactively address nearly 100% of CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEVs) and ransomware threats. TruRisk™ Eliminate stands out as the first all-encompassing solution for vulnerability management and remediation. It effectively balances the need for business continuity with crucial risk mitigation. It not only maps vulnerabilities to various actionable responses executed by the same Qualys Cloud agent but also provides alternative options for addressing these vulnerabilities when patches are not available. Moreover, the agent can isolate assets from the network, safeguarding against exploitation of unresolved vulnerabilities. This holistic approach empowers organizations to manage their security posture more effectively, significantly reducing the risks associated with unpatched vulnerabilities.

Dual Action of Vulnerability Detection & Threat Discovery

The same agent that identifies vulnerabilities also scans for malicious activities, enhancing threat discovery and response across endpoints. This dual functionality allows security teams to proactively address potential risks by detecting malicious activities across your network and endpoints in real time.

Streamlined Compliance Management for Audit Readiness

As the year ends, your auditor will likely request a report in their preferred format. Qualys effectively meets compliance requirements through a robust framework encompassing 1000 policies, 22000 controls, 400 technologies, and 100 regulations. This comprehensive approach provides up to 81% coverage against MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques. It allows you to collect and analyze telemetry through a single solution and agent, simplifying the process of identifying and resolving issues. Additionally, it helps you manage regulatory requirements using a unified interface and generate audit-friendly reports while maintaining a strong cybersecurity posture.

Elevate Your Cloud Security with Comprehensive Solutions

Qualys recognizes the hybrid nature of modern environments, including cloud services and on-premises assets. Its Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) offers a unified approach to managing vulnerabilities and security posture across multi-cloud environments, effectively covering your entire SaaS application stack. The platform utilizes deep learning AI for real-time malware detection throughout the cloud kill chain, addressing key stages such as reconnaissance, exploitation, and lateral movement.

Our unified CNAPP solution provides:

• Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) that provides a comprehensive inventory of your public cloud resources, allowing for the detection and remediation of misconfigurations and non-standard deployments.
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Security that protects your infrastructure by scanning IaC code for potential misconfigurations before deployment, ensuring seamless integration and compliance.
• SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) that empowers you to oversee your security posture and mitigate risks across your entire SaaS application stack, providing peace of mind in an increasingly complex environment. 
• Cloud Workload Protection (CWP) that offers risk-based vulnerability management that prioritizes vulnerabilities and assets according to risk level and business criticality, ensuring that your most vital resources are protected.
•  Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) that allows continuous real-time protection across your multi-cloud environment against active exploitation, malware, and emerging threats. 
• Finally, our solution includes Kubernetes and Container Security (KCS) that helps you discover, track, and secure containers throughout their lifecycle—from build to runtime—ensuring robust security at every stage.

Integrating Third-Party Insights to Get a Unified View of Cyber Risk

Qualys provides a powerful, FedRamp-authorized platform that can integrate security and vulnerability findings from various third-party tools. These insights are normalized and enhanced with intelligence from Qualys Threat Research, incorporating essential business and asset context to improve assessment, prioritization, and remediation efforts. This innovative approach eliminates the need for expensive data lakes and cumbersome proprietary tools, enabling enterprises to concentrate on what truly matters—mitigating cyber risk.

Qualys also equips external stakeholders, including board members and cyber risk insurers, with crucial data necessary for making informed financial decisions based on dollar values. This dual functionality effectively supports internal and external decision-makers, ensuring all organization members are aligned with cybersecurity priorities. Consequently, this alignment drives more strategic and informed decision-making across the board.

A Unified Platform for Data-Driven Discussions

The Qualys Enterprise TruRisk™ Platform is a single source of truth that drives data-driven discussions among key stakeholders with its advanced reporting and dashboard capabilities. Enterprises can effectively manage and reduce risks with unmatched efficiency through automated orchestration and seamless integration with IT Service Management (ITSM) tools like ServiceNow and Jira. This powerful collaboration between security and IT teams allows organizations to address the most critical issues head-on, significantly strengthening their overall cyber risk posture.

Transformative Cybersecurity Solutions for Comprehensive Protection

Qualys has rolled out a series of transformative cybersecurity solutions, including Cybersecurity Asset Management (CSAM) with External Attack Surface Management, Custom Assessment and Remediation (CAR), Vulnerability Management Detection and Response 2.0, Software Composition Analysis (SCA), TotalCloud with TruRisk™ Insights, TruRisk™  Eliminate, Total AI  and Enterprise TruRisk™ Management.

While effective on their own, these solutions offer unparalleled end-to-end asset management and security coverage as part of a comprehensive platform, with a unified view of risk under one Agent and a single scalable solution.

The Qualys Enterprise TruRisk™ Platform integrates all its solutions seamlessly, enabling organizations to build a more secure and resilient digital future. Each application, feature, and insight are carefully designed to work harmoniously, transforming security from a collection of disconnected tasks into a cohesive and coordinated effort.

A Multi-Sensor Approach for Complete Attack Surface Visibility

Qualys uses a hybrid sensor approach to address complex security challenges effectively. This strategy combines various data collection methods, including scanners for physical assets, agents for real-time monitoring, and SaaS connectors for cloud applications. Together, these sensors provide a comprehensive view of internal and external attack surfaces. By implementing these vigilant watchpoints across your security infrastructure, Qualys ensures a strong and resilient cybersecurity program, highlighting the critical role of effective sensors in achieving cybersecurity success. Qualys sensors deliver the most extensive coverage in the industry for your entire threat landscape.

All-New UI 4.0 for Qualys Enterprise TruRisk™ Platform

The Qualys Enterprise TruRisk™ Platform now features an advanced New User Interface (UI 4.0). This new design aims to simplify workflows, boost productivity, and offer a sleek, adaptive experience tailored to your specific needs.

Watch this video to explore the latest enhancements:

Embracing a Risk-based Approach to Cybersecurity

The Qualys Enterprise TruRisk™ Platform stands as the unparalleled leader in cybersecurity, delivering transparent cyber risk scoring capabilities. This platform seamlessly integrates a comprehensive suite of asset management, attack surface management, vulnerability management, remediation, policy compliance, and advanced threat protection within a unified interface.

By harnessing the power of this platform, CISOs and executive security leaders can gain more confidence with the ability to:

• Measure Cyber Risk – Assess their organization’s risk exposure, identify critical assets, aggregate cyber risk across Qualys and third-party products and their Risk Factors, and evaluate the potential impact of threats.
• Communicate Cyber Risk – Translate disparate cyber risk data into shared actionable insights and business impact metrics for key security and business risk stakeholders, ensuring a common understanding of risk across all stakeholders.
• Eliminate Cyber Risk – Eliminate cyber risk across the extended enterprise by guiding precise remediation and mitigation actions linked to financial metrics through a single platform.

To learn more, visit the Qualys Enterprise TruRisk™ Platform page. Don’t wait for the next breach—take charge of your security teams today.

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