Unveiling Qualys Policy Audit: Setting the Bar High for Regulatory Conformity and Audit Preparedness

In today's swiftly evolving regulatory landscape, organizations face mounting pressure to demonstrate their security, compliance, and control across diverse global frameworks like SOX, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, DORA, and more. Qualys, a leading provider of cloud-based security and compliance solutions, tackles this challenge with its innovative offering - Qualys Policy Audit.

Policy Audit is designed to help organizations transition from point-in-time compliance to continuous audit readiness. By automating every stage of the compliance process, from monitoring to remediation, it ensures you're always prepared for audits. The rollout commences on October 20, 2025, and concludes by January 18, 2026.

One key feature of Policy Audit is its Proactive Gap Analysis, allowing users to identify and close compliance gaps proactively, reducing audit failure risks. The platform also offers a pre-defined library of remediation scripts, customizable according to an enterprise's specific needs. Users can even create their own custom QIDs (Qualys IDs) and remediations.

The shift from the existing Policy Compliance module to Policy Audit will be seamless. By January 18, 2026, the Policy Compliance module will be fully deprecated, and all customers will automatically use Policy Audit. Data continuity is ensured, as all existing policies, configurations, and reports remain accessible during the transition.

Fragmented and siloed tools create inefficiencies, delays, and difficulty tracking and testing issue resolution across different teams. Policy Audit addresses this by providing a unified platform for audit readiness. It simplifies remediation by creating automated remediation jobs, addressing critical gaps, and maintaining system hardening.

Audits are now a continuous requirement for organizations, and manual, incomplete reports are labor-intensive, prone to human error, and increase organizational risks. Policy Audit delivers automation at every step, including compliance monitoring, automated evidence collection, and streamlined audit workflows. This reduces audit costs and frees up manual resources.

Modern compliance programs must move beyond checklists and focus on business-critical capabilities to stay competitive and operate confidently amid rising regulatory expectations. Qualys Policy Audit sets a new standard for how organizations achieve and maintain continuous audit readiness. Audit readiness has become a core pillar of operational risk management.

Policy Audit also provides audit-ready reports for auditors, demonstrating compliance quickly and efficiently for any framework from single evidence collection. The rollout consists of three phases: exploration, platform default with rollback option, and full deprecation of Policy Compliance. Technical Account Managers, Qualys Support, and knowledge articles will guide users through migration and training.

Lack of audit controls prioritization and implementation can lead to resource misallocation. Without continuous improvement in audit readiness, uncertainty during audits is a significant challenge. Control values may revert to failing values due to system updates and changes without automated remediation. Policy Audit addresses these issues by providing a proactive approach to compliance and remediation.

Audit failures can have immediate and far-reaching consequences, such as halting critical business functions, delaying market entry, postponing product releases, and eroding customer trust. With Qualys Policy Audit, organizations can ensure they're always audit-ready, reducing these risks.

According to Coalfire's 2023 Compliance Report, organizations can spend between 10,000 to 20,000 hours per audit, with nearly 50% of compliance failures due to human error. Policy Audit addresses these issues by automating evidence and control mapping, reducing human error and saving time and resources.

In conclusion, Qualys Policy Audit is a game-changer in compliance and audit readiness. By automating every step of the compliance process, it ensures organizations are always audit-ready, reducing audit failure risks and associated consequences. It sets a new standard for how organizations achieve and maintain continuous audit readiness, making it an essential tool for organizations navigating today's competitive and rapidly changing regulatory landscape.