Implementing vulnerability assessment for VMs

When we talk about VM vulnerability scanning, the Azure Defender plan of Security Center has functionality that we can use for this. This functionality is called Azure Defender for Servers. It uses a third-party solution known as Qualys in the background, but the process and integration are abstracted from us.

Even though Qualys is used, we do not need to obtain a Qualys license or have a relationship with Qualys. Everything is handled seamlessly inside Security Center:

Figure 8.27 – Azure Defender for VMs

There are four stages to using this functionality:

1. Deploy the Qualys vulnerability scanner extension. The extension can be deployed to Azure VMs from Azure Security Center.
2. The extension gathers information and artifacts concerning the VM and sends them to the Qualys cloud service. Network communication between the VM and the Qualys cloud service is needed for this.
3. The Qualys...