5 Ways HP-FireEye Deal Will Raise Security Services Bar

New Alliance Means New Opportunities

HP Executive Vice President of Enterprise Services Mike Nefkens and FireEye Chairman and CEO Dave DeWalt spoke with CRN about the global security services deal between the two companies, unveiled this week. Here are five ways they say the alliance will change the security services landscape.

New Security Services Power

The new partnership gives HP's $21 billion services organization with 5,000 security professionals the incident response, breach assessment and 24/7 monitoring services offerings from FireEye to blanket the globe with a comprehensive suite of security services.

DeWalt compared the deal to FireEye's $1.05 billion acquisition of security consulting specialist Mandiant last year. "The next-generation security solution needs people and product, and this is people and product times 100 with HP," said DeWalt. "This is human intelligence working together with automated product that really combines to create a better solution."

Mandiant is already investigating 100 breaches every quarter, he said, noting that the HP services muscle could provide the potential to address 1,000 breaches each quarter.

First-Of-Its-Kind Partnership For Both Companies

The relationship is a first-of-its-kind in the security market for both HP and FireEye. "We have not done this with anyone else," said DeWalt. "This is a relationship with HP that I want to nurture and build. HP has [global] reach and a super-powerful professional services organization."

HP's Nefkens said he also sees the deal as "one of a kind."

"On the services side this is the biggest bet we are making," he said. "This is very unique."

Global Scale

HP and FireEye see the deal as establishing a new global security services standard for the top companies in the world, which are all grappling with a barrage of security threats. It comes with no major security vendor dominating the global market. Nefkens said HP will target its top 1,000 strategic clients around the world with the new security services offering, with a plan to call on its top 250 accounts starting this week.

"We are trying through this partnership to become that dominant [security] partner for our customers," he said. "We think this jump-starts both companies globally. We think this is going to be one plus one equals four."

New Partnership Has Teeth To Drive Execution

The multiyear global deal is backed up by a detailed contract with commitments around hiring, compensation incentives and marketing iniatitives, said DeWalt. "This has commitment and depth from the CEOs on down to make this happen," he said. "It's a detailed, in-depth relationship."

Nefkens also stressed that the deal is not a paper tiger. "This is not just a press release," he said. "There are real teeth behind this. It is about helping both organizations grow and providing great service to our customers that are begging for this kind of partnership."

Formidable Security Threats Demand New Model

With 80 percent of security breaches a onetime incident, the secret to success is combining product, services people and processes to win the battle against hackers, said DeWalt.

"How do you scale when 80 percent of the attacks are only seen one time?" he asked. "The only way you can do that is you create more people intelligence. You need to create a more integrated people and product model and then scale that globally. And I think whoever creates that people/product model globally will probably be the winner because of the way the threats are occurring and the way they will continue to occur."