HP reinvents security offerings to look beyond the perimeter

HP has developed new security offerings to protect the interactions between users, applications, and data exchanges. The new HP Security products and services incorporate user behaviour analytics, data-centric cloud access protection, mobile application reputation analysis, contextual threat intelligence sharing, and incident response to help organisations embrace what HP calls a “New School of Cyber Defense”.

Organisations worldwide spent approximately US$77 billion on cyber security in 2014*, but successful breaches increased 25%**, HP noted, implying that a new approach to cyber defense is needed. Organisations have to protect the interactions between users, applications and data, because these interactions contain information that criminals want.

“The old school approach to cyber security focused on securing the perimeter, but the data powering business today goes beyond our four walls and must be protected from cyber threats regardless of where it resides,” said Jeffrey Neo, Regional Director, Southeast Asia, HP Enterprise Security Products. 

“In today’s environment, we must challenge ourselves to embrace the new school of thinking that goes beyond the infrastructure to protect what matters most – the interactions between users, applications and data that when protected, can fuel our businesses and accelerate growth.”

A new HP offering gives companies visibility into user behaviour, delivering a simple, efficient way to detect malicious users within the enterprise. HP has partnered with security analytics company Securonix to deliver HP ArcSight User Behavior Analytics (UBA), which studies behavioural data generated by enterprise users along with broader network event intelligence to detect complex threats. 

HP also announced a new cloud access security platform designed to complement the existing HP Atalla cloud security portfolio. The new HP Cloud Access Security Protection platform provides ‘borderless’ protection of the data itself—at rest, in use or in motion—through a partnership with cloud access security broker Adallom. The platform integrates HP’s existing suite of data security offerings including HP Atalla Information Protection and Control (IPC), an added-value security solution that automatically encrypts files when moving information in and out of the cloud or across platforms.

Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) policies can be managed more intelligently with a fully-integrated mobile application reputation database within the HP Fortify on Demand cloud-based portal. To further protect the interactions between users, data and the applications, all HP Fortify on Demand customers can now request free reputation and behavioural analysis of company-owned applications or those found in major app stores worldwide.

HP Security has also developed HP Threat Central, which is now generally available for all customers. Delivering automated and open sharing of information, HP Threat Central offers contextual analysis of information, prioritisation of security data and identification of results that will allow organisations to take action. In addition to value-added intelligence, analysis of underground forums and threat actor profiling from HP Security Research, HP Security is also working to augment the HP Threat Central service with intelligence feeds from a network of companies, including AlienVault and Crowdstrike.

HP Security and FireEye separately announced a partnership that will deliver incident response offerings and develop an industry standard reference architecture providing customers with a blueprint for advanced threat protection services and incident response capabilities.

*Gartner Press Release, August 2014

^**Ponemon Institute, Cost of Cyber Crime Study 2014