Governance & Risk Management , Patch Management , Video

Qualys CEO on Vulnerability, Patch Management Needs of SMBs

Small and midsized businesses must grapple with heightened digital risk despite having less resources, personnel and intelligence than their larger counterparts, said Qualys CEO Sumedh Thakar.

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Organizations typically rely on different teams and tools to discover assets, find misconfigurations and vulnerabilities, prioritize them and patch them, which can be very cumbersome for resource-constrained entities, according to Thakar. He said Qualys has created packaged offerings that can help SMBs simplify the process of locating, fixing and defending against any threats that might get into their environment (see: Sumedh Thakar on Fusing Vulnerability and Patch Management).

"This is really what they need," Thakar said. "Their main businesses is to go sell flowers or pizza or whatever it is. They're not in the business of building security teams and big security programs to address the challenges they face."

In this video interview with Information Security Media Group, Thakar also discussed:

• What's driving rapid adoption of Qualys' patch management offering;
• How cyber insurance connects with vulnerability and patch management;
• How Qualys competes and wins in VM against Rapid7 and Tenable.

Thakar leads the company's vision and strategic direction. He joined Qualys in 2003 in engineering and grew within the company, taking various leadership roles focused on helping the company deliver on its platform vision. Starting in 2014, he served as chief product officer, where he oversaw all things product, including engineering, development, product management, cloud operations, DevOps and customer support. Thakar became president and CEO in 2021.