HP Boosts Security With Fortify Acquisition

Despite being somewhat distracted by its executive upheaval of late, Hewlett-Packard is to boost its application security portfolio after it announced an agreement to acquire Fortify Software.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed. According to HP, the acquisition of Fortify will allow HP to help organisations meet compliance regulations and bolster security by integrating security assurance into the development lifecycle.

Increasing Challenges

“Businesses operate in a world of increasing security and compliance challenges, and the applications and services that they rely on are core to the problem and the solution,” said Bill Veghte, executive vice president, Software and Solutions, at HP, in a statement. “With Fortify’s leadership in static application security analysis combined with HP’s expertise in dynamic application security analysis, organisations will have a best-in-class solution to improve the security of their applications and services.”

HP and Fortify have history together, such as the “Hybrid 2.0” security analysis technology the companies announced in February that updated integration unveiled in June 2009. Plans for the deal also follow IBM’s purchase of OunceLabs last year, which some analysts predicted would challenge HP.

“I think it is a great move for HP,” Forrester Research analyst Mike Gualtieri told eWEEK. “It is a perfect fit for their tools given the integration they have done with Fortify over the past few months. Developing secure applications will always be important and too many app dev organisations don’t know where to begin.”

Evetual Integration

When the deal closes HP will run Fortify initially as a standalone company. Fortify will eventually be integrated into the HP Software and Solutions business, with its products becoming part of the company’s Business Technology Optimization application portfolio, HP said.

“Fortify has always been committed to helping chief information security officers and application teams find, fix and prevent security vulnerabilities before they can be exploited by attackers,” said John M. Jack, CEO of Fortify, in a statement. “Joining HP will allow us to further integrate our proven technology and security expertise with HP’s solutions, letting our joint clients shrink the time-to-security for their new and existing production applications.”