In a series of announcements, Hewlett-Packard Co yesterday unveiled two network security products and took the lid off a new partnership with Intel that promises to bring policy-based management across heterogeneous networks. The Palo Alto, California-based company added two new software products to its OpenView security management line-up. The first, OpenView Access Manager is a solution that manages individual employee access rights to operating systems, databases and applications such as HP-UX, Windows NT, Oracle and SAP R3. HP says the software provides IT administrators with an intuitive user interface, using one common administration tool to manage and monitor all resources accessible by end users. The second product, OpenView Node Sentry, guards against hacker attacks by comparing network and system activity against known hacker intrusions and facilitating a defensive response. The software, based on technology from Cisco Systems Inc, whom HP is partnering with for the announcement, uses sensors to monitor network traffic and consolidate data on a console. It can deliver seven day, 24-hour surveillance of networked applications and detect patterns of intrusion. HP also said it has teamed up with Intel Corp to develop an open, standards-based policy-based network management solution that will control network bandwidth and other network services such as security and virtual private networks (VPNs), across heterogeneous networking environments. Christina Mahon, general manager, within HP’s OpenView network management division said there were very few policy-based solutions available today, and of those, the majority could only manage homogeneous environments, ie, they can only manage one particular vendors’ products or group of products. But under the HP/Intel alliance, a new software product, to be launched within the next few months, will be able to manage mixed networks.
