It happens every year when Daylight Savings Time (Summer Time in Europe) starts kicking in. Qualys displays weird times in its user interface and it gets hard to figure out what time scans outside your local time zone are actually going to run. So here’s what to do about Qualys showing the wrong time in its user interface.
Qualys factors Daylight Savings Time into scheduled scans as long as you select the DST checkbox, but it doesn’t factor it into the user interface if you specify your local timezone. Setting your timezone to Auto will fix that.
To DST or not DST?
First things first: Always check the DST box when scheduling a scan, if Qualys will let you. That box tells Qualys to follow Daylight Savings Time when applicable. If a region doesn’t follow DST at all, the checkbox is grayed out. Selecting the box when possible tells Qualys to follow DST during the months when it’s active, and revert during months it isn’t.
The DST checkbox doesn’t tell Qualys that it’s DST. It tells Qualys whether you want to follow DST rules. This cuts down on a ton of manual work, if you have a lot of scheduled scans.
Fixing Qualys showing the wrong time in its user interface
If you manually tell Qualys what time zone you’re in, Qualys doesn’t observe daylight savings time in the user interface. This makes scans appear to be an hour off what time they should be. The way to fix this is to let Qualys ask your web browser what time it is. To do this, click on your name in the upper right, then select User Profile. Click Locale, then select Auto from the time zone dropdown. As long as your web browser knows what time it is, Qualys will display the correct local time for you. And if your coworkers work in other time zones, Qualys will display their correct local time as well.
Correct use of these two little-known, often-misunderstood settings fixes one of the most frequent complaints I hear about Qualys.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.