Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has acquired California-based Niara, in an acquisition designed to strengthen its security portfolio.
Niara, a provider in the User and Entity Behaviour Analytics (UEBA) security market segment, will operate within HPE Aruba and work to enhance its Clear Pass network security portfolio for wired and wireless network infrastructure.
According to HPE, UEBA is a new class of security technology, designed to identify security threats that have penetrated traditional firewalls and protection systems.
Niara has developed a behaviour analytics software that automates the detection of attacks and risky behaviour inside an organisation, reducing the time and resources needed to neutralise such security threats.
Niara’s software works by establishing baseline characteristics for all users and devices
within an organisation, globally. After the baseline is established, the software will be on the lookout for any significant deviations or inconsistent activities that can result in security threats.
According to HPE, manually investigating such an incident could take at least 25 hours. But, a software programme with machine learning capabilities, such as from Niara can detect such an event in less than a minute.
After such an incident is discovered by Niara, a ClearPass Network Access Policy can be triggered which will isolate the user or the device from the network and prevent access to sensitive or confidential or corporate information.
By integrating such technology with its own ClearPass Policy Manager, HPE says that it can offer its enterprise customers an advanced threat detection, neutralisation and prevention solution for network security in wired and wireless environments, along with Internet of Things (IoT).
HPE stated that Niara’s co-founders including Sriram Ramachandran, Prasad Palkar, along with several other engineers were initially part of Aruba and have contributed in the development of Aruba’s core technologies and Aruba OS operating system.
HPE Aruba senior vice president and general manager Keerti Melkote said: “With this transaction, we are continuing to innovate at the Intelligent Edge with software-defined solutions to better protect our customers’ business and IoT data.
“With over 20 billion IoT devices expected to be connected to networks by 2020, security is the number one concern for our customers.
“Combining Niara’s next-generation behaviour analytics software with Aruba’s ClearPass network security portfolio will deliver the industry’s most complete visibility and attack detection system.”
Niara CEO and co-founder Sriram Ramachandran said: “ClearPass has earned a reputation as the industry’s leading device and user-access policy solution.
“Integrating Niara’s advanced behavioural analytics with ClearPass is a natural extension that will now deliver network-wide, real time visibility and predictive assessment of potential risks inside the enterprise.
“We also are excited to elevate our relationship from a ClearPass Exchange integration partner, to directly contributing to Aruba’s growth.”
