HP acquires Voltage Security with a view to data encryption
Fri 13 Feb 2015
Hewlett-Packard Company is adding Voltage Security to its significant portfolio of acquisitions over the last five years. Art Gilliland, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Enterprise Security Products for HP, announced the purchase in a recent blog post.
Voltage provides solutions focused around data encryption and tokenization, and its services are intended to bolster HP’s existing Atalla cloud encryption and data security product.
Gilliland said in the post: “This announcement aligns with HP’s focus on end-to-end protection of the data itself, helping enterprises neutralize the impact of a breach and proactively combat new security threats,”
The current president and CEO of Voltage is Sathvik Krishnamurthy, appointed to the position in 2003 after four years as Vice President of Marketing and Business Development with file transfer and authentication provider ValiCert, and a previous six years at WorldTalk.
Gilliland makes particular reference to the need for a cloud provisioner to protect data flowing into Big Data analytics framework Hadoop – a configuration which he describes as an attractive target for cyber-attackers.
Voltage currently provides end-to-end payments system protection and tokenisation for six of the largest North American payment processors, and its technologies seem to have potential for transparent inclusion in the extant HP security environment: “Importantly, Voltage’s solutions allow enterprises to use protected data in applications without having to re-architect their applications or adopt fragmented frameworks.” says Gilliland. “This capability extends from the data center to cloud and Hadoop environments, all under a single framework.”
The post emphasises what most of us know – that 2015 is the year when cyber-security rises several places in the list of corporate priorities. Gilliland cites HP’s fifth annual Cost of Cyber Crime Study, which found that cyber-crime costs the average U.S. organisation $12.7mn (£8.25mn) annually in a climate where companies endure an average of 138 attacks a week.
HP’s last significant security acquisition was in 2010, when the company bought ArcSight, a Big Data security analytics and intelligence firm. The same year the company also acquired Fortify Software, an enterprise-level threat-assessment product.
