August 5, 2025
5 min read
Melania Watson
Qualys launches Agentic AI agents for autonomous cyber risk management, delivering real-time insights and faster remediation to cut costs and threats.
Qualys Launches Agentic AI Agents to Streamline Cyber Risk Operations
Qualys has introduced new Agentic AI capabilities on its platform, extending autonomous risk management through a marketplace of AI agents designed to streamline cyber risk operations for organizations. The latest development from Qualys includes a marketplace of Cyber Risk AI Agents integrated into its platform. These agents deliver real-time risk insights across multiple attack surfaces and prioritize exposures based on business impact. According to Qualys, these AI agents autonomously remediate issues at speed and scale, supporting the operations of a Risk Operations Center (ROC) and helping organizations reduce both risk and operational costs. As organizations face a rising volume and sophistication of cyber threats alongside increasingly complex attack surfaces, Qualys asserts that traditional methods have struggled to keep pace with the volume of exposures. The new approach, using self-orchestrating AI agents, aims to mitigate manual bottlenecks that leave security teams facing lingering exposures."Cybersecurity has never been able to keep pace with the volume of enterprise exposures due to human-scale prioritization and remediation. Integrating Agentic AI into the Qualys platform marks a major leap - from reactive response to real-time risk reduction. With autonomous remediation and intelligent prioritization, this type of innovation enables faster risk reduction, more efficient resource usage, and greater accuracy in recommended actions. This evolution shifts security teams from tactical responders to strategic agentic AI orchestrators, bringing us closer to a future of self-healing cybersecurity."
— Tyler Shields, Principal Analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group
Embedded AI for Risk-Centric Automation
The AI capabilities are embedded in Qualys' Enterprise TruRisk Management (ETM), a core element of the company's ROC framework. ETM aggregates exposures for organizations to measure, communicate, and reduce cyber risk in line with business value. The integration of Agentic AI introduces pre-built AI agents that automate threat prioritization and remediation aligned with an organization's specific risk appetite and operational context. Included with the update is the Cyber Risk Assistant, a prompt-based interface that helps security teams navigate risk management processes, providing context-aware insights across millions of exposures and facilitating autonomous operations within risk workflows.Capabilities of the AI Agents
The Qualys marketplace features ready-to-use AI agents offering several functional advances for security teams:- Continuous Risk Insights: AI agents continuously discover external attack surfaces, assess risk in the context of emerging industry threats, and prioritize risks according to each organization's unique assets and environment.
- Adaptive Remediation: Agents like the Microsoft Patch Tuesday Lifecycle Agent identify and correlate prioritized vulnerabilities with remediation options, reducing both cost and time to address security flaws. These agents focus on reducing Mean Time To Remediation (MTTR) against rapid exploitation by threat actors.
- Customization: Security teams can design custom, no-code AI agents tailored to specific business needs and risk management processes. These agents can be trained and reused to support scalable, repeatable automation within an organization's unique operational context.
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"Qualys Agentic AI, embedded into Enterprise TruRisk Management, is transforming how organizations manage cyber risk and powering a smarter, more agile Risk Operations Centre. It's ushering in a new era where CISOs can augment their security teams with intelligent AI agents that perform autonomous analysis and take decisive, high-impact actions to reduce risk faster, more strategically, and with greater efficiency."
— Sumedh Thakar, President and CEO, Qualys
Operational Focus
Qualys states that the new Agentic AI functions automate and streamline various stages of risk reduction, improving cost efficiency and effectiveness for security operations teams. These AI-driven solutions address industry-wide challenges in risk management caused by complex infrastructure and proliferating cyber threats, with an emphasis on aligning remediation efforts to business-critical priorities.Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What are Agentic AI agents?
Agentic AI agents are sophisticated AI entities capable of autonomous operation, learning, and taking action to achieve specific goals. In the context of cyber risk, they can discover, assess, prioritize, and even remediate security vulnerabilities without constant human intervention.How do Qualys' Agentic AI agents streamline cyber risk operations?
These agents streamline operations by automating tasks like continuous risk assessment, identifying and correlating vulnerabilities with remediation options, and prioritizing risks based on business impact. This allows security teams to focus on more strategic initiatives rather than manual, repetitive processes.What is Enterprise TruRisk Management (ETM)?
Enterprise TruRisk Management (ETM) is a core component of Qualys' Risk Operations Center (ROC) framework. It aggregates and measures cyber risk across an organization's exposures, aligning risk reduction efforts with business value. The integration of Agentic AI enhances ETM by automating key risk management workflows.What is the Cyber Risk Assistant?
The Cyber Risk Assistant is a prompt-based interface that empowers security teams to interact with the AI agents. It provides context-aware insights, helping users navigate complex risk data and facilitating the management of autonomous operations within risk workflows.Can I create my own AI agents with Qualys?
Yes, Qualys allows security teams to design and deploy custom, no-code AI agents tailored to their specific business needs and risk management processes. These custom agents can be trained and reused for scalable automation.What are the benefits of using Agentic AI in cybersecurity?
The benefits include faster risk reduction, improved efficiency in resource usage, greater accuracy in recommended actions, and a shift for security teams from tactical responders to strategic orchestrators of AI capabilities, ultimately moving towards self-healing cybersecurity.Originally published at SecurityBrief Australia on Mon, 04 Aug 2025