Tips and Best Practices

What is an activation key? You need an agent activation key to install a Qualys Cloud Agent. This provides a way to group agents and bind them to your subscription with Qualys Cloud Platform. You can create different keys for various business functions and users.

Benefits of adding asset tags to an activation key: Tags assigned to your activation key are automatically assigned to agent hosts. This helps you manage your cloud agents and report on agent hosts.

Running the agent installer: You must run the installer from an elevated command prompt, or use a systems management tool using elevated privileges.

Be sure to activate agents to provision agents for modules - Vulnerability Management (VM). Activating an agent for a module consumes an agent activation key. You can set up auto-activation by defining applications for activation keys or do it manually in the Cloud Agent UI.

What happens if I skip activation? Agents will sync inventory information only to the Qualys Cloud Platform (IP address, OS, DNS and NetBIOS names, MAC address), and host assessment is not performed.

How many agents can I install? You can install any number of cloud agents but can activate an agent only if you have an activation key. The Agents tab in the Cloud Agent UI tells you about your installed agents.

Check to be sure agents are connected: Once installed agents connect to the Qualys Cloud Platform and provision themselves. You can see agent status on the Agents tab - this is updated continuously. If your agent doesn’t have a status, it has not successfully connected to the cloud platform and you need to troubleshoot.