Network security is a big business and it's a core part of both the Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Juniper Networks portfolios.

HPE is currently in the process of acquiring Juniper, in a $14 billion deal that won't close for many more months. Executives from both HPE and Juniper have downplayed the risk of overlap across the respective portfolios, but what's the actual situation when it comes to security and secure access service edge (SASE).  What do each of these vendors actually have today?

SASE and SSE

Let's start by taking a look at each vendor's respective SASE offerings.

The Juniper SASE platform is like many SASE offerings: a combination of multiple capabilities.

 

Product Capability Juniper Security Director Cloud  Management for sites and security policy, logging and reporting Juniper Secure Edge Firewall-as-a-service (FWaaS), secure web gateway (SWG), data loss prevention (DLP), zero-trust network access (ZTNA), threat prevention Juniper Session Smart Router (SSR100 and SSR1000) SD-WAN optimized router, can also be managed with Juniper Mist artificial intelligence (AI) cloud control

 

HPE also has a SASE architecture with a very similar set of capabilities to what Juniper Networks provides in many respects. Just like Juniper, there is a SD-WAN and a security services edge (SSE) solution.

 

Product Capability HPE Aruba Networking Central   Cloud-based network management and orchestration platform HPE Aruba Networking SSE  Connectivity-as-a-service platform with ZTNA, SWG, cloud access security broker (CASB), digital experience monitoring (DEM) EdgeConnect SD-WAN  Software and hardware components to enable SD-WAN operations at the branch level

 

On the surface, there seems to be a lot of very obvious overlap in the SASE/SSE product lineups of HPE and Juniper. With HPE's broader cloud portfolio that includes HPE GreenLake, one could argue in favor of the HPE solution as being potentially better in some way, but that might be a stretch.

While SASE and SSE represent the new hotness in terms of network security trends, there is a lot more to network security that needs to be considered.

Firewalls and intrusion prevention system (IPS)

Outside of the SASE/SSE architecture, organizations have relied on firewall and IPS technologies for decades.

This is an area where there is relatively little current overlap as Juniper brings assets that the current HPE Aruba Networking portfolio is lacking in terms of capabilities. HPE has a long history with IPS and firewall, which in the past included the HP Tipping Point Next-generation firewall (NGFX) that HP ended up selling to Trend Micro in 2015.

The cornerstone of the Juniper security fleet in this area has long been the SRX series of firewalls. The Juniper SRX lineup includes at least 19 different offerings to meet a variety of deployment requirements.

Product Use Cases Firewall Throughput IPS Throughput vSRX Virtual 200 Gb/s (VMware)/200 Gb/s (KVM) N/A cSRX Virtual 11.9 Gb/s N/A SRX1600 Branch, Campus 24 Gb/s 21 Gb/s SRX2300 Campus, Data Center 39 Gb/s 35 Gb/s SRX4300 Campus, Data Center 90 Gb/s 45 Gb/s SRX4700 Campus, Data Center 1.4 Tb/s 110 Gb/s SRX1500 Branch, Campus 9.2 Gb/s 3.3 Gb/s SRX4100 Campus, Data Center 40 Gb/s 13.9 Gb/s SRX4200 Campus, Data Center 80 Gb/s 27.7 Gb/s SRX4600 Campus, Data Center 400 Gb/s 38 Gb/s SRX5400 Data Center 960 Gb/s 172 Gb/s SRX5600 Data Center 1.44 Tb/s 245 Gb/s SRX5800 Data Center 3.36 Tb/s 638 Gb/s SRX300 Branch 1.9 Gb/s 200 Mb/s SRX320 Branch 1.9 Gb/s 200 Mb/s SRX340 Branch 4.7 Gb/s 400 Mb/s SRX345 Branch 5 Gb/s 600 Mb/s SRX380 Branch 20 Gb/s 2 Gb/s SRX550 Branch 7 Gb/s 800 Mb/s

 

Threat intelligence also lacks overlap

Another strong set of capabilities that Juniper brings into the fold is around threat intelligence.

HPE has threat intelligence capabilities as part of its overall portfolio and, in particular, has some capabilities as part of the GreenLake cloud offerings, but Juniper will be a strong complement with its dedicated Juniper Threat Labs teams.

No doubt, post acquisition there will be a single threat intelligence team that will combine the best of both HPE and Juniper assets.

Beyond threat intelligence, Juniper Secure Analytics is a security information and event management (SIEM) solution offering real-time monitoring of security information and events, with automated threat recognition and enforcement across the network. Juniper's Advanced Threat Prevention goes a step further, combining intelligence with SRX firewalls to detect and block threats with actionable threat intelligence. HPE doesn't quite have the same tooling in place for network security today and will benefit greatly from the addition of the Juniper capabilities.

So in the final analysis, what's the verdict?

SASE is a loaded, overhyped concept in many respects and HPE and Juniper on the surface have seemingly similar sets of offerings. Digging deeper, though, it is very apparent that the network security hardware and services that Juniper has does not really overlap with current HPE Aruba networking capabilities. This will go a long way to dramatically bolstering the future combined HPE-Juniper networking portfolio.