Clone Systems rebuilds CloneGuard with private AI that ranks what to fix first

Clone Systems said it rebuilt CloneGuard, its vulnerability scanning and penetration-testing platform. The release quadruples the detection library, adds authenticated web/API testing, extends internal scans to remote hosts via lightweight agents, and adds a privately hosted AI assistant that ranks findings by what to fix first — with plans starting at $185/year and online checkout (company).

SAFETY desk — same-day company primary that vulnerability scanning is shipping with private, in-house AI remediation ranking — not “paste findings into ChatGPT” — while authenticated and agent-based coverage closes gaps scanners usually miss.

Authenticated testing, as the same wire has it: unauthenticated testing reports what is visible from outside an application. Most business logic sits behind the login. CloneGuard now signs in with customer-supplied test credentials and assesses the web applications and APIs that only a logged-in user can reach. An API is an application programming interface — the machine-to-machine doors an app exposes. The same capability extends to Clone Systems’ web application penetration testing, which the company says now runs from inside a valid session against privileged workflows and role-based permissions.

Internal scanning, still company: lightweight endpoint agents on Windows, macOS, and Linux report software inventory to the platform, extending internal scanning to remote and work-from-home machines that a network scan cannot reach. Because the platform already holds the inventory, the company says vulnerability checks run against it in seconds and can run daily. When a new vulnerability is published, affected hosts are identified immediately rather than at the next scan window.

Findings, company: tagged against the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog — CISA’s KEV list of flaws already exploited in the wild — and linked to the exploitation context behind them. Each scan also renders an interactive attack-path view showing how findings chain together, so remediation starts with what an attacker would reach first.

Named voice on the release: Elyse Hamilton, vice president of business development at Clone Systems. She says the uncomfortable part of scanning behind the login is that you find more, and that is why the company did not ship the scanning without the assistant — a longer list only helps if someone tells you which three things to fix on Monday. Her quotes are color only beyond that attributed line and stay in Sources.

Private AI assistant, still company: every CloneGuard report leads with a fix-these-first section. For the findings that matter most, the assistant names the affected software and the specific action required. It answers questions about a customer’s environment in plain language and compares any two scans to show what has been remediated and what is new. The assistant runs entirely inside Clone Systems’ environment. The company contrasts that with scanning platforms that ask customers to supply their own public large-language-model API key, which sends vulnerability data outside the customer’s control. A large language model, or LLM, is the kind of AI that writes and answers in sentences. The CloneGuard assistant requires no customer API key, never transfers customer data to an outside provider, and never uses customer data to train any model.

Availability and pricing, company: CloneGuard is available today with published pricing and online checkout, with no sales call required. Plans start at $185 a year for external vulnerability scanning of a single IP address, and every subscription includes Clone Systems’ U.S.-based security operations center, staffed around the clock by certified analysts. A security operations center, or SOC, is the team that watches alerts. More than 100 resellers — including managed service providers, payment processors, hosting companies, and Qualified Security Assessors (QSAs) — deliver CloneGuard under their own brands. A QSA is a person or firm certified to check Payment Card Industry compliance.

About-box context, optional and company-attributed: Clone Systems has provided managed security and compliance services since 1998, and has been a PCI SSC Approved Scanning Vendor since 2007. PCI SSC is the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council — the group that writes the card-data security rules. An Approved Scanning Vendor, or ASV, is a firm allowed to run the official scans those rules require. Headquartered in Philadelphia with operations in Larnaca, Cyprus.

Plain English for the rest of the card: vulnerability scan = an automated check for known security weaknesses. authenticated testing = logging in so the scanner can see what a signed-in user sees. KEV = CISA’s list of flaws already exploited in the wild. SOC = security operations center, the team that watches alerts. LLM = large language model, the kind of AI that writes and answers in sentences. API = the machine-to-machine doors an app exposes. ASV = Approved Scanning Vendor, a firm allowed to run official PCI scans. QSA = Qualified Security Assessor, certified to check card-data compliance.