Blog 2: Automate Asset Deletion from Inventory in Qualys (Cloud Agent module)

Introduction:

Qualys is an award-winning cloud security and compliance solution. It helps businesses simplify IT security operations and lower the cost of compliance by delivering critical security intelligence on demand and automates the full spectrum of auditing, compliance and protection for Internet perimeter systems, internal networks, and web applications.

I'm using Qualys since a year & observed some problems in doing manual activity, which needs solutions to improve routine process, to save efforts & time. Due to some business reasons I didn't build the tool but I'm sharing the entire idea with design & flow of automation.  

Problem Statement:

- As per business requirement, due to multiple factors, like formatting system, hardware fail or software fail, employee left the job, etc. factors, we need to remove asset record from inventory.

- Daily we get mails from Desktop team to remove stale entries from inventory.

o we daily copy the asset-name or NetBIOS name,

o search in Qualys portal,

o if asset found we take delete action & we acknowledge to the desktop team.

o if asset not found we acknowledge to the desktop team

- This is daily routine task & we get at least minimum 10 different mails with different senders.

- So the difficulty is, to open each mail, while working on focussed task & this mails used to divert our mind from current ongoing task.

- And we’ve to open portal, delete asset, close the window, and inform the team about execution.

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Solution:

- The objective is the automate this deletion activity to save time, efforts & to stay away from distractions.

- Develop automation bot, which will continuously monitor the mail with keyword in requested mail subject or body.

- Once it detects expected mail, automation bot will:

o create array of asset(s) from given list,

o carry that hostname(s) to Qualys portal via API,

o validate asset name(s) by searching it in inventory,

o once it found searched assets in result, it’ll notify us,

o then, portal will request for asset deletion &

o then, it’ll delete it.

- Once asset gets deleted, bot will respond deletion status on mail for acknowledgement.

- Before deploying into production, we’ve to perform testing to check accuracy of bot operation.

- Sharing below, flow of Automation bot lifecycle.

 

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- This is how entire automation flow for bot application can be built & will execute.

Technology Requirements:

1. Outlook

2. Outlook API (for integration)

3. Python

4. Qualys

5. Qualys API (for integration)