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The pantheon of major security players includes the likes of Cisco Systems, Juniper Networks, IBM, Symantec, McAfee and even Microsoft. Missing among the noted is Hewlett-Packard, which has fielded security products over the years, but not a concerted effort to stake out a piece of the security market.
That’s changing, rapidly. Today, HP unveils its first firewall/intrusion prevention appliance based on ProCurve 8212 and 5400 Series switches. The new hardware introduction is a milestone in the HP goal of not only establishing a significant security presence, but also marks a significant step in its evolutionary to disrupt the entire security and IT infrastructure marketplace.
“We’re a new kind of security player that reduces the gaps and reduces the complexity of security,” says Chris Whitener, HP’s chief security strategist. “You’d really have to bolt together IBM, Dell and EMC to get the breadth of HP. We are the first horizontal security player.”