Qualys Cloud Agent for Windows Release 6.3

November 21, 2025

With this release of Cloud Agent for Windows, we are introducing the following new features and enhancements.

Support for Chunk Downloads

The Cloud Agent for Windows now supports downloading large files such as manifests, binaries, and patches in segmented chunks. Cloud Agent downloads the large files in chunks of 1MB each.

This improvement ensures efficient downloads, optimized resource utilization, smoother downloads over slower networks, and faster and reliable data transfers.

Manually Unquarantine Host Assets

With this release of Cloud Agent, we have added support to unquarantine an agent host manually. You can unquarantine the host asset when the host asset connection with the server fails or the host remains in the quarantined state.

 You need an unquarantine key to unquarantine a Cloud Agent host. Contact Qualys Support to generate an unquarantine key for your Cloud Agent hosts.

Sample command: Open the C:\Program Files\Qualys\QualysAgent and execute the following command.

QualysConfigUtility.exe /unquarantine key=<key_value> 

To learn more this feature, refer to the Cloud Agent for Windows Installation Guide.

Proxy Randomization

The Cloud Agent for Windows now supports proxy randomization. When you configure multiple proxies, the Cloud Agent randomly selects one of them to establish an outbound connection.

Random proxy selection reduces connection failures by attempting connections with different proxies to avoid repeated connection errors.

To learn more about Proxy Randomization, refer to the Qualys Cloud Agent for Windows Installation Guide. 

Improvements for Cloud Agent Health Check Tool

We have enhanced our Cloud Agent Health Check Tool to fetch the details for Cloud Agent troubleshooting. The Cloud Agent Health Check Tool now reports the local system issues and displays them in the Health Check logs. This enhancement reduces the troubleshooting time and dependency on the internal IT team or system administrator, and improves the overall efficiency of Cloud Agent.

To capture the local system issues, we have added support for the following functions in the Cloud Agent Health Check Tool:

Capture Protocols and Cipher Details

Cloud Agent Health Check Tool now reports the negotiated protocol versions, such as TLS 1.2, TLS 1.3, Cipher Suite Details, such as AES, RSA, and SHA256, and Key Exchange and Encryption Algorithms. These details help you analyze the network traffic and connection issues.

Capture and Validate Certificate Details

This functionality of Cloud Agent Health Check Tool captures the detailed certificate information used for Cloud Agent communication. Cloud Agent captures the following certificate details:

  • Certificate Subject/Subject Alternative Name (SAN)
  • Certificate Issuer Details
  • Certificate Validity
  • Certification Chain Validation Status
  • Revocation Server Details

Enhancements for Patch Management

Life-cycle Changes for Legacy Operating Systems

We are streamlining the Patch Management support for the legacy Windows operating systems. To ensure the timely delivery, high-quality content, and continuous innovation we are introducing the Patch Management life-cycle changes for the following legacy Windows operating systems:

Windows 8

Windows Server 2012 (non-R2)

And earlier versions of Windows

To learn more about Patch Management support updates for the above-mentioned platforms, refer to Patch Management Lifecycle Changes for Legacy Windows Operating Systems.

Upload Software Artifacts to Qualys CDN

We have enhanced the Patch Management to support uploading pre/post actions artifacts and vendor-acquired patch artifacts to the Qualys CDN Server. The artifacts uploaded to the CDN server can be referenced in the Patch Management workflows. Cloud Agents download these artifacts from the nearest CDN server and use them during patch deployment.

Uploading software artifacts to the CDN server offers the following benefits:

Pre/Post Actions for Software Installation

You can now upload software artifacts for Install Software type pre-actions and post-actions to the CDN Server. This helps you with:

  • Centralized Access: The packages uploaded to the CDN server can be centrally accessed and reused in multiple deployment jobs.
  • Reliable Downloads: Cloud Agent retrieves artifacts from the nearest CDN server, minimizing latency and failures.

Vendor Acquired Patches

You can centrally manage the vendor-acquired patches with the following capabilities:

  • Enable or disable the use of vendor-acquired patches in Patch Management.
  • Upload or update patch artifacts to the Qualys CDN server for consistent distribution.
  • Delete patch artifacts from the CDN server when no longer required.
Required Application Version Patch Management 3.10.0.0

Enhancements for CAR

Support for RemoteShell Commands

The Cloud Agent for Windows now supports the RemoteShell commands for Custom Assessment and Remediation (CAR). With this feature, you can connect to any remote assets from the CAR user interface and execute the remote shell commands to retrieve host asset logs for analysis. You can have a maximum of ten active remote connections.

Supported RemoteShell Commands

Currently, the following commands are supported by RemoteShell:

  • date: Returns the date on the system.
  • whoami: Returns the user details.
  • ps: Lists all running processes.
  • scriptrun: Runs the CAR scripts
  • ls: Lists all running packages and directories.
  • run: Runs an executable on a remote host.
  • delete: Deletes all files
  • shares: Lists modified shares or mounted drives.
  • reg
  • copy: Copies file from source to destination.
  • mkdir: Creates a directory.
  • cd: Changes the directory.
  • restart: Restarts the system.
  • cls: Clears screen.
  • history: Returns the history of executed commands.
  • env: Lists all environment variables.
  • kill: Kills the process with specified pid or name.
  • netstat: Lists active TCP connections and network statistics.
  • users: Lists the users.
  • stop: Stops the RemoteShell session. 
  • nslookup: Resolve DNS Namespace or IP.
  • ipconfig: Lists the IP configuration.
  • drivers: Lists all the mounted drivers.
  • shutdown: To shut down the system.
  • hash: Displays the hash of a file.
Required Application Version Custom Assessment and Remediation 2.6.2

Behavior Changes

There are no behavior changes in this release.

Platform Coverage Support

There is no new platform coverage added in this release.

Issues Addressed

The following important and notable issue is addressed in this release.

Category/Component Issue Description
Patch Failure We fixed an issue where the patching to assets were failing with exit code -2145124329 due to unavailability of patch file. 
Hash-based Blocking The Hash-based Blocking feature in the Endpoint Detection and Response application could not block the applications with file size more than 25 MB. Now, we have increased the file size limit for the Hash-based Blocking to 100 MB to fix this issue.

Known Issues, Limitations, and Workarounds

There are no known issues for this release. 

 

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