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ProActive Defense with Mauricio Sanchez

Every month in this column, I focus on ProCurve ProActive Defense, our comprehensive, multi-layered network security strategy. Lately, I’ve been asked by many customers to explain how ProActive Defense operates in the larger context of HP’s overall security framework called Secure Advantage.

It’s an excellent question. The simple answer is that as part of HP, ProCurve works hard to make sure that our strategies and technologies are aligned with those of the greater company. Still, I’d like to take a closer look at Secure Advantage and point out some specific ways that ProActive Defense dovetails with HP’s broader security strategy.

A brief overview of Secure Advantage
The Secure Advantage strategy arises directly from HP’s Adaptive Infrastructure. HP Adaptive Infrastructure offerings are designed to move organizations from high-cost IT islands to low-cost pools of IT assets. The products, services and solutions of the HP Adaptive Infrastructure drive gains across your data center through six key core areas called enablers: IT systems and services, power and cooling, management, security, virtualization and automation.

The security aspect of the HP Adaptive Infrastructure delivers proactive, built-in infrastructure and data protection. (Sound familiar, anyone?) It also has a strong focus on compliance validation.

Of course, HP has a rich legacy in the IT security realm. For the past 35 years, HP has been protecting the majority of the world’s financial data through ATMs, point-of-sale, credit card information and electronic funds transfers. HP has a global installed base of hardened infrastructure components that process and retain massive amounts of sensitive business, customer and employee data.

Secure Advantage solutions provide organizations of all sizes with a secure, end-to-end business advantage, following the directive that protecting the security of your gear and your data should be as simple as using an ATM card. A key enabler of the next-generation data center, Secure Advantage:

• Protects resources — by using trusted platforms and a trusted, hardened infrastructure to improve availability; to protect networks, systems, applications, software and database management systems; and to minimize disruptions due to security breaches.
  
• Protects data — in all its forms (data at rest, in transit and in use), using encryption and identity management, in combination with other proactive security management techniques.
  
• Provides validation — at necessary audit points to enable audit trails for compliance with industry regulations and with internal and external auditors; with real-time alerts and processes; and using encryption and key management to work with integrated compliance solutions across your organization.

How ProCurve ProActive Defense fits in
It’s easy to see how, philosophically, ProCurve ProActive Defense melds nicely with Secure Advantage.

The ProActive Defense security strategy delivers a trusted network infrastructure that is immune to threats, controllable for appropriate use, and able to protect data and integrity for all users. ProActive Defense combines offense (proactive, pre-admission access control) and defense (post-admission network immunity) approaches simultaneously — automating protection, detection and response within a trusted network infrastructure.

Here are some specific ways in which ProActive Defense and Secure Advantage are similar:

• Proactive. An important attribute for both security approaches is an active vigilance designed to help prevent and ward off as many potential assaults as possible, before they can cause trouble.
  
• Based on a trusted infrastructure. Just as you can’t build a solid house on a sandy, shifting foundation, you can’t deliver IT or network security unless you have a strong foundation. A trusted infrastructure provides that strong foundation, and both ProActive Defense and Secure Advantage begin with a trusted infrastructure.
  
• Compliant. Regulations add considerable time and cost burdens to businesses today. With added accountability demanded by auditors both within and beyond the organization, compliance is becoming increasingly important to organizations in nearly every industry and in every region of the world. Both ProActive Defense and HP Secure Advantage make it easier and more cost-effective to comply with regulations and demonstrate that compliance.
  
• Automated. Effective security, whether of a network or a server, must be automated. ProActive Defense and Secure Advantage automate security processes to provide the continuous and instant responsiveness required to deal with real-world threats.
  
• Adaptive. ProActive Defense is based on ProCurve’s Adaptive Networks vision. Secure Advantage is based on HP’s Adaptive Infrastructure. These synergistic perspectives mean that your entire IT, not only your security, is able to adapt to your users, to the applications you run and to the ever-changing business environment your organization faces.
  
• Standards-based. A standards-based infrastructure gives you freedom to choose the specific solutions best suited to achieving your overall business and IT goals. You aren’t locked into any single technology vision, as with proprietary solutions. This flexibility and choice is particularly important to combat evolving and more potentially menacing security threats.
  
• Scalable. Security issues transcend the size of the organization. It’s just as important for a small business as for the largest multi-national corporation to keep data, resources and transactions secure. Organizations can choose from a wide range of products to implement ProActive Defense and Secure Advantage solutions, suited to the size and specific needs of each installation.

Future directions for HP Secure Advantage and ProCurve ProActive Defense also are in sync. Look for advances such as secure virtualization, end-to-end data protection, ever-improving security management and continually enhanced tools for helping you secure your data and resources, achieve compliance and avoid the negative consequences posed by security threats.

My responsibilities as chief network security architect for HP ProCurve include making sure that as ProActive Defense evolves, it will continue to complement and support Secure Advantage solutions. I look forward to reporting to you in coming years on our progress.

Mauricio Sanchez, MSEE, CISSP, is the Chief Network Security Architect for HP ProCurve. He is responsible for specifying ProCurve’s ProActive Defense security technology strategy across all product lines.