MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 06/29/09 -- VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN), the trusted provider of Internet infrastructure services for the networked world, and Qualys, Inc., the leading provider of on demand IT security risk and compliance management solutions, today announced a strategic relationship whereby iDefense intelligence is integrated with scanning data from QualysGuard® Vulnerability Management (VM). The integration drives immediate availability of two new services that combine advanced, in-depth security threat intelligence and vulnerability scanning data, which enables enterprises to protect critical IT assets from compromise or attack, particularly against zero-day threats and vulnerabilities. Zero-day threats are exploitable security vulnerabilities in software that are discovered before the software vendor identified them and begun a process for patching.

Through the first of these services, iDefense has made its iDefense Exclusives security vulnerability data available through QualysGuard® VM. Availability of iDefense Exclusives enables Qualys to create scan signatures for zero-day vulnerabilities. This enhancement to QualysGuard VM offers security teams more efficient and accurate risk mitigation capability against zero-day threats and vulnerabilities.

Additionally, the iDefense security intelligence data is integrated with QualysGuard® VM to enable customers with the ability to correlate iDefense vulnerability reports with Qualys scan data against IT assets to prioritize vulnerabilities based on severity, business criticality and relevance to the organization. This integration capability, available on the iDefense portal, helps security teams prioritize patch deployments and remediation efforts particularly between full vulnerability scan cycles of their environments.

"As security threats and vulnerabilities continue to evolve, organizations are increasingly looking for tools and solutions that will enable them to proactively prioritize and respond to security attacks in a cost-effective way," said Irida Xheneti, Security Services Research Analyst at IDC. "Through the integration of the VeriSign iDefense security intelligence with the QualysGuard Vulnerability Management solution, organizations will be able to leverage deep security analysis of their respective environment, security intelligence of current threats and vulnerabilities combined with the ability to prioritize actions to vulnerabilities based on asset criticality."

QualysGuard® VM is a leading vulnerability management solution that automates the lifecycle of network auditing and vulnerability management across the enterprise, including network discovery and mapping, asset prioritization, vulnerability assessment reporting and remediation tracking according to business risk.