News release

HP Announces Praesidium Security Products Now Available in Integrated Cross-platform Solution

PALO ALTO, Calif., Dec. 12, 2000

Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE: HWP) today announced that its industry-leading Praesidium e-security software products, including HP Praesidium Virtualvault, HP Praesidium Webenforcer and HP Praesidium Domainguard, along with its Web performance management software, HP Webqos, are now integrated in a solution that is expected to protect cross-platform corporate servers. With this integrated solution, companies are expected to be able to more quickly and efficiently secure their valuable technological infrastructure and provide better, safer and faster service to their customers.

HP Praesidium Virtualvault is a secure Web platform designed to safely connect enterprise applications and databases to clients on the Internet. HP Praesidium Webenforcer provides essential security for Microsoft® NT platforms by automatically uncovering hundreds of vulnerabilities, eliminating them, and continuously monitoring and enforcing security. HP Praesidium Domainguard is HP's premier business portal security manager. It enables organizations to quickly and easily deploy secure Web applications by assembling the key security elements of authentication (single sign-on, authorization and administration) into one complete solution.

HP Webqos enhances customer experiences by optimizing Web site performance and availability. It also helps prevent denial of service attacks directed against the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) level by receiving and processing HTTP connections before passing them on to the Web server. Now all of these products are integrated and available to run on UNIX®, NT/Windows® 2000, Solaris and other servers. "We're pleased to offer our popular HP Praesidium security products fully integrated. Now they offer an even more robust, plug-n-play solution for our customers," said Roberto Medrano, general manager, HP Internet Security Solutions Business Unit. "Firewalls alone do not meet the security requirements for today's business transactions and complex e-business applications. Security solutions need to provide more flexibility and control so that information can be shared without risking business assets."

Recent security breaches have heightened the need for more computer security, and have increased the demand for products and solutions that can be easily implemented and quickly configured for existing systems. HP's integrated security products add extra security through content filtering and URL checking, ensuring unauthorized URLs don't reach back-end servers. The HP Virtualvault Web proxy integration reroutes applications to available servers ensuring no transactions are lost and can be scaled by adding back-end servers quickly and transparently. This added flexibility allows customers to continue to develop on familiar Web platforms and protects access to internal applications on disparate platforms.

About HP e-Security

HP's Internet Security Solutions Business Unit delivers best-in-class e-security products, solutions and services that enable enterprise, ISP and ASP Internet applications to deploy services more quickly, securely, smoothly and inexpensively. The HP Praesidium product portfolio includes trusted Web-server platforms ( HP Virtualvault, HP Webenforcer), Web access and authorization managers ( HP Domainguard), extranet Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and firewalls. Most Praesidium products run on HP, Sun and Microsoft systems. The HP Global Security Practice contributes professional expertise to review systems and advise clients on the best products and services needed to secure their valuable technological infrastructures. More information can be found at http://www.hp.com/security.

About HP

Hewlett-Packard Company -- a leading global provider of computing and imaging solutions and services -- is focused on making technology and its benefits accessible to individuals and businesses through simple appliances, useful e-services and an Internet infrastructure that's always on.

HP has 88,500 employees worldwide and had total revenue from continuing operations of $48.8 billion in its 2000 fiscal year. Information about HP and its products can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.hp.com.

Microsoft is a U.S. registered trademark of Microsoft Corp.

Windows is a U.S. registered trademark of Microsoft Corp.

UNIX is a registered trademark of the Open Group.

This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include the possibility that the market for the sale of certain products and services may not develop as expected; that development of these products and services may not proceed as planned; and other risks that are described from time to time in HP's Securities and Exchange Commission reports, including but not limited to the annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended Oct. 31, 1999, and subsequently filed reports. If any of these risks or uncertainties materializes or any of these assumptions proves incorrect, HP's results could differ materially from HP's expectations in these statements. HP does not intend to update these forward-looking statements.