HP fortifies network security

By Warwick Ashford, ITWeb London correspondent

London, 18 Apr 2007

HP's ProCurve Networking division has unveiled updated security products designed to provide integrated and automated management and security for wired and wireless networks.

Making the announcement in London yesterday, ProCurve CTO and network infrastructure architect, Paul Congdon, said organisations could not afford to fail in taking control of their networks because security threats were here to stay and were still increasing steadily.

"ProCurve has come up with a proactive defence solution that is simple to deploy and use, but at the same time is secure, reliable and affordable," he said.

The first new component of the system is ProCurve's Network Immunity Manager (NIM), due for release in June. The NIM is a piece of software that plugs into the new Procurve Manager Plus version 2.2, and is designed to detect and respond automatically to threats such as virus attacks.

Next, Congdon said ProCurve planned to deliver its Network Access Controller 800 appliance in the third quarter of this year, to ensure all devices connected to the network conform to security policies in terms of software and operating systems.

Finally, Congdon said the new version 2.2 of ProCurve's Identity Driven Manager, also due in Q3 07, was designed to work with the new network access controller to provide endpoint integrity as well as ease deployment and reduce complexity even further than previous versions.

"Fortifying security for enterprises without massive and costly replacement of network infrastructure is a critical focus of ProCurve's Adaptive Networks vision," said Congdon.

Although conceding that none of the components represented any new concepts in network security, regional product manager Andy Bryant said the products concentrated on fulfilling ProCurve's adaptive networks vision of increasing security and productivity, while reducing complexity and cost.

"The new bit is that we are introducing a way of tying all these security elements together into a single management system that is automatic and works across both wired and wireless networks," he said.