By Joseph Menn
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Hewlett-Packard Co will team with prominent cybersecurity firm FireEye Inc to offer services including assessments and incident response, bringing one of the most sophisticated security teams to a much broader market.
The two Silicon Valley companies announced their partnership as the largest conference aimed at corporate security buyers gets underway Tuesday in San Francisco.
In an interview ahead of the announcement, FireEye Chief Executive David DeWalt described the deal as "capability meets scale."
HP has 5,000 security consultants, many of whom manage security operations on an outsourced basis for large corporate clients. Those consultants can now bring in FireEye's technology, which tests computer commands before they are executed, and the investigators at Mandiant, which FireEye acquired last year.
Besides serving government and private clients who have been breached, Mandiant is known for research reports such as one naming a specific unit in the Chinese People's Liberation Army for breaching major companies.
Mandiant's main services are expensive, however, and the HP deal will bring a co-branded version of its services to smaller companies.
Mike Nefkens, executive vice president of HP Enterprise Services, said more clients want to analyze and improve their defense before the next attack, and that the new offerings would meet that need.
"They don't want to wait until there's an incident," Nefkens said.
HP also reaches many countries where FireEye has had a smaller presence, including Africa, Europe and the Middle East.
DeWalt declined to say if the deal was exclusive or give other terms.
FireEye also said it was expanding the number of companies that it shared threat information with, including a partnership with Israeli firewall provider Check Point Software Technologies (NASDAQ:CHKP).