HP has announced new high-performance security solutions designed to prevent network breaches in a Converged Infrastructure by delivering comprehensive data protection across both physical and virtual environments.

The new offerings bring enhanced security to HP FlexFabric, the company's high-performance, flexible and secure data center networking fabric for a Converged Infrastructure.

As organizations move to more virtualized and converged infrastructures, the importance of security is increased. Virtualized environments and their applications are subject to the same threats that impact traditional data centers. While many virtual machines (VM) are hosted on a single server, one security breach can have a disastrous impact. As a result, when organizations accelerate the migration of production workloads and mission-critical assets to a virtualized environment, security requirements must become a strategic element of these plans.

The HP TippingPoint Secure Virtualization Framework (SVF) is a suite of products designed to help prevent network threats from impacting virtualized environments. The TippingPoint Virtual Controller (vController), the first product introduced under the SVF, extends TippingPoint security protection from physical to virtual networks by routing it through an HP TippingPoint N-Platform Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) appliance. The vController prevents security attacks by inspecting all VM traffic as it moves through the network -- either between VMs or from VMs to traditional servers. Additional vController benefits include:

-- Increased network security by extending HP's automated threat-prevention capabilities to virtual environments.

-- Reduced deployment complexity by enabling customers to extend the same processes, tools and expertise used in securing their physical environments to their virtual infrastructures.

-- Simplified management of network security by providing single-pane-of-glass management, visibility and control across both physical and virtual networks.

The vController builds on the high-availability functionality and market leadership of the recently announced HP ProLiant G7 scale-up servers, which are able to isolate a damaged VM or associated memory problem without bringing down the physical server or its resident VMs. vController provides an added layer of security by preventing malicious traffic from damaging VMs, which also could cause problems. Combined, vController and HP ProLiant G7 servers provide clients with increased security and availability to help ensure business continuity.

HP also has expanded its security product line with the introduction of the new HP TippingPoint Reputation Digital Vaccine service (Rep DV). Rep DV ensures that customer-deployed IPS solutions have the most current and accurate list of malicious or suspicious websites and blocks traffic to or from these sites automatically. The list of sites is updated every two hours and powered by HP's DVLabs, the industry-leading security research and development organization that, through its community of researchers, partners and customers, has been credited with discovering more security vulnerabilities than any other lab in the industry.

Industry-leading network security solutions

Businesses continue to be bombarded with security attacks that use every possible method for stealing data and compromising a network. To maximize protection and reduce business risk for its clients, HP also is introducing two new HP TippingPoint S-series solutions that further extend network security from local area networks to the core of the data center for both physical and virtual domains. Benefits include:

-- Flexible deployment of network protection with the HP TippingPoint S1200N IPS A7500 Module, which delivers advanced HP Tipping Point IPS security inspection in a blade. The module provides another way for inspections to work with existing HP A7500 switches and integrates security directly into the network device.

-- Enhanced security across the network with the HP TippingPoint S1500 SSL Appliance, a dedicated solution for decrypting and re-encrypting Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) website traffic. This allows encrypted network traffic to be inspected for malicious content, helping ensure that suspicious activity can be immediately addressed.

Enabling converged networks

These solutions complement HP's new server-edge connectivity offerings, also announced today. The offerings include the new HP Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) module for the HP A5820 data center switch, which converges storage and network top-of-rack switches as well as dedicated server and storage network adapters to dramatically reduce connectivity complexity at the server edge.

HP Networking Services

HP provides a complete portfolio of life cycle offerings that span edge-to-core services to help ensure high network performance and availability as well as cost-effective operations. This is achieved with HP's experienced professionals who evaluate clients' network infrastructures, identify risks and point the way toward performance and security improvements. HP services enable clients to speed their evolution to an efficient shared-service management model based on the HP Converged Infrastructure architecture.

Pricing and availability