PALO ALTO, Calif., April 15, 2009 – HP today announced major new releases of its application security software designed to help companies lower costs and protect against malicious web attacks by hackers.

The new offerings are part of HP Application Security Center, a suite of software and services that helps companies ensure the security of their web applications by helping them discover, fix and prevent vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers.

• HP Assessment Management Platform 8.0 – helps customers reduce costs and mitigate application risk across the enterprise through a distributed, scalable web application security testing platform.
   
• HP WebInspect 8.0 – helps customers thoroughly analyse complex web applications. This new release delivers fast, accurate security testing and remediation capabilities for web applications, including those built on emerging Web 2.0 technologies.
   
• HP Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Project Services for Application Security Center – help customers rapidly and cost-effectively implement their application security initiatives with a complete solution maintained and managed by HP.
   
• The new offerings help IT executives prioritise security issues by identifying the assets and data that matter most to their business. This approach allows organisations to focus their limited security resources on issues that have the greatest business impact, such as compliance with security guidelines from the Payment Card Industry (PCI).
   
• HP Assessment Management Platform 8.0 software helps customers set up a Center of Excellence (CoE) for application security. In a CoE model, a small team of security experts helps analyse the results of security tests that are implemented by people that may not have security expertise. This can help increase security coverage across the enterprise at minimal cost. 

Additional Resources

• For more information, visit www.hp.com/go/stophackers
• "Matt Sets his own Price" video on client-side pricing, a common vulnerability
• Billy Wins a Cheeseburger" video on security vulnerabilities in Flash applications
• Register for a Webinar on application security on May 5
•  Free download for HP SWFScan, a free tool to help Flash developers protect their websites against unintended application security vulnerabilities
• Free download for HP Scrawlr, a tool that helps organisations quickly find SQL injection vulnerabilities in their websites
• HP Application Security blogs
• Whitepaper: The comprehensive business guide to application security (A three part series)
  o "The Mandate for Application Security"
  o "The Business Case for Application Security"
  o “The Best Practices Guide for Application Security”
• Facebook fan page
• Facebook group
• Linked In group

HP Executive Quote

“HP Application Security Center helps IT organisations manage the growing risk of security breaches that take place through web applications,” said Jonathan Rende, vice president and general manager, Business Technology Optimisation Applications, Software and Solutions, HP. “Today’s application modernisation efforts are creating a better end-user experience but it may also produce websites that are more vulnerable to hackers.”

Third-Party Quotes

“The cost of application security breaches, especially those that result in data being compromised, can be substantial,” said Chenxi Wang, principal analyst, Security and Risk Management, Forrester Research, Inc. “Forrester estimates that cost per record for a security breach is approximately $305 for companies in a highly regulated industry. This cost can be prohibitively high for companies that handle hundreds of thousands or millions of data records.”

“To ensure that our web applications are secure, we have incorporated security testing into every facet of our quality assurance and web application development life cycle,” said Erika Pecciotto, executive director of enterprise technology and quality, Sony Pictures Entertainment. “With HP Application Security Center, which is integrated with HP’s quality and performance testing solutions, our team of highly skilled security experts is now able to increase our security capabilities across our 25 development groups.”

Keywords

application security, cross-site scripting, Flash security, hackers, HP, security research, Web security, application, application lifecycle, ALM, Software a s a Service, SaaS, Payment Card Industry, PCI

About HP

HP, the world’s largest technology company, simplifies the technology experience for consumers and businesses with a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure. More information about HP (NYSE: HPQ) is available at http://www.hp.com/.

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Editorial contacts:
Jennifer Walker PN for HP
jennifer.walker@porternovelli.co.uk
+44 207 853 2277

HP Media Hotline
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