Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has beefed up its cyber defence offer for enterprise networks with the addition of behavioural analytics to its detection and response capabilities and zero-trust access to its campus network proposition. The latter covers local-area edge networks, including its private 4G and 5G play, now integrated with its Aruba enterprise Wi-Fi portfolio.
The twin security extensions are available in its network management platform, Aruba Networking Central, which rides over its GreenLake hybrid-cloud platform for sundry network, compute, and storage services. They cover new AI-powered network detection and response, plus new ability to enforce zero-trust security policies for access to local-area edge networks, as well as to the cloud.
It said of the latter addition: “This new local edge capability brings the same access control policies defined for the cloud directly to campuses and data centres… regardless of a user’s location or connection method.” The implication is the service works for its private 4G/5G edge-cellular offer, too, now integrated with Aruba Wi-Fi as Enterprise Private 5G within the Aruba portfolio.
The new AI defence pitch in its Aruba detection and response capabilities, around behavioural analytics, uses telemetry within (the data lake within) its management platform to train and deploy AI models to monitor and identify unusual activity in vulnerable IoT devices on enterprise networks. As an aside, Verizon said yesterday (August 6) that IoT is the weakest link in enterprise networks.
HPE explained: “IoT plays an increasingly important role in supporting mission-critical business processes. As the opportunity grows for IoT to provide organisations with data to train and activate generative AI models, so too does the critical need to detect changes in network traffic patterns, connection status or dynamic device attributes that are indicative of a successful compromise.”
Jon Green, chief technology and security officer in HPE’s Aruba Networking division, said: “Enterprises are increasingly realising that unsecured IoT devices… present an observability blind spot in their security solutions. Those devices can be exploited for initiating larger network attacks, and thus are also one of the largest contributors to a growing attack surface.”
The message from HPE is that companies need this “AI-powered” network threat detection and universal edge-to-cloud access and enforcement policies to protect their properties, processes, and people. Green said: “HPE is providing… a single access control policy for application resources, on-prem or off-prem, that customers can adopt to reduce overlapping and potentially confusing controls.”
HPE has also introduced new policy recommendations to protect against threats by intercepting potential attacks. It stated: “To ensure recommendations will not disrupt network operations, teams can also preview changes to their security policies before implementation.” The new security tools follow the arrival of “AI-powered” security observability and monitoring in the Aruba portfolio.
