HP and Symantec have joined forces in the fight against worms and viruses, it was announced in London yesterday.
"We are combining a leading enterprise services company and leading IT security company, joining forces to deliver security intelligence," says Todd Reece, HP`s mission-critical services director.
The partnership aims to create an end-to-end identification of virus or worm threats.
"A threat starts at firewalls but it doesn`t stop at the Internet interface, it carries on into the IT operation area," says Reece.
"So jointly we are seeing what the threat is and working together to get compliance. Symantec provides data about the worm and we see what we can do from an IT perspective, and then work out what is a reasonable way of giving users protection.
"We can take advantage of the worm or virus based on Symantec knowledge and then based on HP lab work, we can protect whatever hole it may exploit in an operating system in a matter of days, using that hole to protect against further holes but also inoculating other devices," adds Reece.
Once a fix has been devised, it can be deployed across hundreds of thousands of machines, he adds.
"So in the window period we have to react, in some cases it may be a countermeasure to protect against a threat while in other cases, it may be a patch to prevent problems," says Reece.
Share
