HPE bolsters hybrid mesh firewall platform

HPE is updating and expanding its hybrid mesh firewall family, adding features that are designed to**** strengthen protection against AI threats. New capabilities give customers visibility into AI application usage, restrict access to high-risk AI websites, and provide the ability to filter keywords and manage AI tool file uploads.

The upgrades enable a unified security fabric across enterprise environments—physical, virtual, and containerized—to safeguard security policies that follow the user and the workload, not just the device, according to Eve-Marie Lanza, senior security solutions marketing manager at HPE.

“AI is everywhere, from chatbot sites to embedded applications, making it imperative for organizations to be able to deliver consistent and secure access. Hybrid mesh firewalls can provide flexible control and enforcement to manage and mitigate AI site and application risks, as well as threats from AI‑accelerated attacks, such as ransomware,” Lanza wrote in a blog post about the new HPE Juniper Networking hybrid mesh firewalls.

“Hybrid mesh firewalls provide unified, multiform‑factor firewall security, giving organizations consistent policy, visibility, and enforcement across on‑premises, cloud, and remote environments. With hardware appliances, virtual firewalls, cloud‑native firewalls, and firewall as a service (FWaaS) under a single management plane, teams can apply the same rules everywhere to reduce gaps and complexity,” Lanza wrote.

HPE’s hybrid mesh firewalls are controlled by company’s management platform, HPE Juniper Networking Security Director. “Enhancements to the chatbot within Juniper Security Director now make it easier for any IT operator to understand security posture and review and implement change, without dedicated security expertise,” Lanza wrote. She gave examples of how operators can query the bot in natural language and receive guidance on topics with queries such as:

• Provision the SRX for {vendor} cloud deployment
• Import policies from {vendor} firewall and translate to SRX intent with parity checks
• Identify rules with zero hits in {time window} and propose cleanup
• Create a policy that lets {role/group} access {app/service} from {locations} during {schedule} with {inspection}

Announced at the RSAC 2026 Conference this week, the AI management controls are supported by features introduced in a new release of Junos OS and implemented across the vendor’s SRX firewalls.

New additions HPE’s SRX firewall family include the Juniper Networking SRX400 series for branch offices, campus and distributed enterprise sites. The new firewalls support all of the new AI controls and bring carrier‑grade security features—previously featured in larger SRX platforms—into smaller, high‑performance appliances. That means better scale, resilience, routing, and inspection capabilities, according to HPE.

The new SRX440 model and the new AI control features for the hybrid mesh firewalls will be available in the second quarter of this year.