ProCurve Networking by HP Tuesday is announcing two networking security products, following a trend by several vendors working to better integrate security software with switching devices.
Hewlett-Packard unit ProCurve, which is second to Cisco Systems in networking port shipments globally, will unveil ProCurve Network Immunity Manager, software that automatically detects and responds to network threats, company officials said. Network Immunity Manager will be a plug-in for ProCurve Manager Plus 2.2, a revision also being announced today.
Network Immunity Manager starts at $US4,999 for managing 50 devices and will be available June 1, ProCurve product manager Andre Kindness said in an interview.
In the third quarter, ProCurve will ship a second new network security product, ProCurve Network Access Controller 800, a device designed to provide endpoint verification, Kindness said. It will work with ProCurve's Identity Driven Manager software, which is also being revised to Version 2.2 in third quarter. Both new products function in wireless and wired networks. Pricing for the controller was not announced.
Rob Whiteley, an analyst at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass., said the Network Immunity application will provide better security visibility, while the controller will add network control such as secure access to guests using a network. ProCurve has an "impressive" level of integration of its products into other networking gear, he noted.
"We see many vendors today claim to have 'unified' security where it's backed into the network fabric, but without proper management and policy administration, this simply isn't true," Whiteley said in an e-mail interview. "ProCurve puts a lot of emphasis on the ease of use and integration on the management consoles to ensure that enforcement is baked into the network hardware and that the policy administration is all centralized in a single pane of glass."