Qualys acquires Blue Hexagon’s AI/ML platform

Qualys, Inc., a provider of disruptive cloud-based IT, security, and compliance solutions, has announced the acquisition of Blue Hexagon’s assets. This brings AI/machine learning (AI/ML) to the Qualys Cloud Platform, assisting in the conversion of petabytes of highly integrated data into meaningful insights for customers.

This acquisition will allow Qualys to leverage its powerful Cloud Platform and its more than 10 trillion data points to uncover behavior patterns such as active vulnerability exploitation, advanced network threat identification, and adaptive risk mitigation across all assets and applications. This dynamic combination of highly integrated security data and machine learning technology will provide Qualys customers with predictive and automated cyber security risk reduction.

“The team and I are delighted to join such an innovative, industry-leading cloud security company,” said Nayeem Islam, CEO and co-founder of Blue Hexagon. “Our deep learning-based Network Detection and Response products augment Qualys’ massive security data lake with network data and deep learning, enabling enhanced security risk assessment and detection.”

Blue Hexagon is an AI/ML innovator of Cloud Threat Detection and Response solutions that enable enterprises to adopt the public cloud securely by real-time detection of various types of cloud attacks, ranging from supply chain infection in containers and storage to crypto miners and APTs with command and control to unauthorized activity from malicious actors.

“It is a pleasure to welcome the brightest minds in AI/ML and cybersecurity to the Qualys team,” said Sumedh Thakar, president and CEO of Qualys. “Qualys’ mission is helping organizations identify and reduce cyber risks, and the blue hexagon platform will enable us to provide powerful context-aware insights that will enhance our customers’ cyber resilience.”

All Blue Hexagon employees are joining the Qualys team with Nayeem Islam becoming vice president of product management for the threat analytics platform. 

The Blue Hexagon AI/ML technology will be integrated throughout the Qualys Cloud Platform allowing customers to: 

Detect active vulnerability exploitations — Blue Hexagon’s AI/ML-based threat detection capability, which is integrated into Qualys VMDR, will supplement vulnerability assessment by detecting active exploitations based on network behavior patterns and suspicious activities.

Implement adaptive risk mitigation — Leverage the Qualys Cloud Platform for predictive analytics to reduce the risk of open vulnerabilities and threats including exposure of business-critical assets with adaptive mitigations.

Augment detection and response with the context of network threats — Qualys Multi-Vector EDR and Context XDR will be able to collect, inspect, and analyze network telemetry, protocols, and traffic in an agentless manner, including encrypted traffic, for early signs of ransomware and malware attacks using Blue Hexagon’s AI/ML-driven network detection.