On the heels of Intel’s acquisition of McAfee, Hewlett-Packard has announced plans to acquire another security industry player. HP will pay $1.5 billion, or $43.50 per share, in an all-cash deal for security and compliance firm ArcSight.
This is HP’s second security-related acquisition in as many months. In August, HP acquired security assurance company Fortify Software. HP is betting its latest in a string of acquisitions will beef up security, lower the risk, and streamline compliance at a lower cost for its customers. That’s a tall promise, but one that HP may be getting closer to with the ArcSight buy.
“From a security perspective, the perimeter of today’s enterprise is porous, putting enormous pressure on clients’ risk and compliance systems,” said Bill Veghte, executive vice president of HP’s Software and Solutions business. “The combination of HP and ArcSight will provide clients with the ability to fortify their applications, proactively monitor events, and respond to threats.”
Beyond Perimeter Security
As HP sees it, enterprises are facing a challenge that its combined security portfolio can solve: Companies need to give employees, partners and customers more access to applications, services and information amid escalating threats and ever-growing complexity and regulatory challenges.
HP said adding ArcSight to its portfolio gives clients a 360-degree view of IT operations, broader security and compliance tools, the ability to detect threats and risks by correlating both activity and state changes in real time, and a feedback loop between build, manage and monitor to ensure that enterprises remain secure.
Tom Reilly, president and CEO of ArcSight, went so far as to say the acquisition will create a new type of security solution for the modern enterprise. The result of the merger, in his view, is an integrated security platform that goes beyond identifying risks to remediating them. “In a world where perimeter security is…