HP Expands Security Portfolio

HP on Monday plans to expand its HP Secure Advantage security services portfolio with a variety of new offerings aimed at making corporate security solutions easier to acquire, integrate, and manage.

Building upon capabilities it acquired through its 2008 purchase of EDS -- now called HP Enterprise Services -- HP aspires to be a one-stop shop for enterprise security and compliance.

"This is a major expansion of our portfolio with more than 90 new services and additional products and partners," said Chris Whitener, chief strategist of HP Secure Advantage, in a phone interview.

The security landscape has become so complex, says Whitener, that companies need help figuring out what solutions they need. He estimates that there are about 800 vendors offering "point solutions" -- products which deal with a specific security problem -- and said that enterprise customers may be managing 100 or 200 different security and compliance products.

"This is driving a lot of our customers crazy," he said.

HP Secure Advantage aims to address the bewildering array of options by offering consulting and training, and security solutions for both managed and traditional computing environments. The goal is to make risk more manageable and to tailor products and services to specific business needs.

Whitener says that HP can help companies spot where they've spent too much or too little and rebalance their security commitments to better match the risks.

"A lot of our enterprise customers have saved millions of dollars because they've been over-allocated in some areas and under-allocated in others," he said.

Some of HP's new products and services include: HP Access Control Printing Solution Suite, which provides authentication with printing; the HP Scanjet Enterprise 7000n Document Management Workstation Series, which offers improved data protection through secure erasure options and encrypted scan-to-PDF functions; and a unified reporting dashboard through the HP Business Service Automation (BSA) Essentials Network.