Vulnerability management company Qualys has been adopted by IBM Global Services as its standard service for tracking and fixing vulnerabilities in its customers' networks.
Qualys has already been used by IBM in Europe for some time, but the new agreement extends this to the U.S and the rest of the world.
The deal allows IBM to use Qualysguard to gather vulnerability information and correlate it with IBM's own managed security service offerings.
The agreement is a major coup for Qualys, whose business doubled last year, according chairman Philippe Courtot. "It is becoming uneconomic for companies to manage their own security,"he said. "It will be increasingly outsourced to specialists in future."
Qualys has 1,500 customers, including Google, EBay, Expedia and Microsoft, which use its service to scan for internal vulnerabilities. Two-thirds of the company's business is now in the United States, with 30 percent in Europe and 5 percent in Asia.
"Vulnerability management has become a key security requirement for many companies," said John Suehr, segment executive for IBM Business Continuity and Recovery Services in a statement. "IBM and Qualys solutions can offer customers an enhanced degree of network security protection."
www.qualys.com.
