HPE Looks to Infuse NAC with Advanced Analytics via Aruba

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Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE), following the acquisition of Niara, is now gearing up to apply user and entity behavioral (UEBA) analytics to wireless networks built by its Aruba Networks subsidiary.

Vinay Anand, vice president of ClearPass Security at Aruba Networks, says the network access control software that Aruba sells under the ClearPass Security brand will soon be informed by machine learning and Big Data analytics generated by Niara software.

Niara software, says Anand, works by first establishing what amounts to normal end-user behavior. Any deviation from that behavior is then identified as an anomaly that will automatically trigger policy enforcement rules designed to quarantine any potential threat.

Anand says that, from a security perspective, UEBA will prove crucial because so many false positives get generated by existing security technologies. Overwhelmed by those alerts, the IT organization starts to become inured to them, even though everyone knows the network perimeter for all intents and purposes has been thoroughly compromised, says Anand.

“The important alerts get drowned in all the noise,” says Anand.

Machine learning algorithms, coupled with other forms of advanced analytics, clearly offer a lot of potential when it comes to making IT environments more secure. The challenge facing IT organizations now is deciding how best to go about embedding those algorithms into their IT environments.