Michael Callahan, the head of marketing for HP’s security business, stopped by theCube at HP Discover 2012 to discuss how enterprises should secure their environments in the age of cloud apps, mobile devices and big data.

He starts out by emphasizing that it’s not only enterprise IT that got more complicated in the past few years – hackers have also become more cunning and sophisticated.  But while the challenges may be bigger, new technologies are tilting the balance in the good guys’ favor.

Callahan says that data analytics, namely software from Autonomy, is a game changer in the security space. Instead of manually filtering through documents and files through policies, Autonomy’s solutions automatically categorize and process data in real time. This becomes vital in non-traditional networks that connect to mobile devices, cloud-based services and everything in between.

Securing an enterprise-scale environment of this sort breaks down into two separate components according to the executive. The first is visibility: understanding what goes on in the network: HP accomplishes this using log management software from ArcSight.

The second part of the equation is fortifying the apps, Callahan says. He notes that over 82 percent of successful breaches exploit application vulnerabilities, adding that the most effective way of combating this is to not have any in the first place. Hewlett-Packard offers cloud services that allow enterprise developers to test apps – both the standard kind and mobile – before rolling them you.

He says that HP also sells software that makes it possible to secure mission-critical applications that are already up in the production environment, but cannot be brought down for maintenance. This is achieved using what Callahan calls virtual patches, as well as real-time network monitoring technology that can track security events across 300 different platforms.