About HP Wolf Pro Security
HP Wolf Pro Security is the subscription tier of HP's endpoint security range, sold to businesses that own Windows PCs but do not employ anybody whose full time job is security. It bundles three defences HP also sells to large enterprises: threat containment built on micro-virtualisation, next generation malware protection, and anti-phishing that watches where credentials get typed. HP describes the approach as layered, and describes the product as covering phishing, zero day and ransomware attacks. It is licensed by term rather than bought outright, and reaches customers either preloaded on HP business hardware or through HP channel partners. This page covers the line as a whole rather than any single release of it.
What it does
Platform
| Operating system | Windows |
|---|---|
| Supported browsers | Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Chromium |
Licensing
| Term | One year and three year terms |
|---|
Management
| Model | Cloud connected, with background updates from HP |
|---|
What HP Wolf Pro Security actually does
The containment layer is the part that separates this from ordinary antivirus. Instead of inspecting a file and deciding whether it looks dangerous, it opens risky things, meaning email attachments, downloads and browser tabs pointed at unknown sites, inside a disposable virtual machine created for that task alone. Whatever the file does, it does inside that machine, and when the tab or document closes the machine is destroyed with it. HP states the isolation is enforced by hardware features in Intel and AMD processors rather than by software alone, which is the argument for why malware cannot simply switch it off. Alongside it runs HP's malware protection, doing the conventional job of scoring files and behaviour, and an anti-phishing layer aimed at the moment a user types a password into a page that is not what it claims to be.
Where it sits in the HP Wolf range
HP sells security at three heights. Below this sits whatever a Windows PC already has, plus the free standard versions of HP Sure Click and HP Sure Sense that HP leaves on the machine when a paid licence lapses. HP notes those keep working but stop receiving updates and support. Above it sits HP Wolf Enterprise Security, the tier built around HP Sure Click Enterprise, which assumes a security team, a policy framework and somebody reading the telemetry. Wolf Pro Security is the middle, and the middle is defined by who manages it rather than by what it blocks. HP's datasheet for the preloaded edition is explicit that the target is small and medium sized businesses without dedicated IT management teams. Management is cloud connected, with updates arriving in the background behind a dashboard rather than a console that expects an administrator.
Who it is for
The clearest fit is a business of somewhere between ten and a few hundred Windows PCs, where the person responsible for security also does something else for a living, and where the realistic threat is not a targeted intrusion but a member of staff opening an invoice that is not an invoice. Containment suits that shape of risk well, because it does not depend on recognising the attack in advance. It also suits organisations already buying HP hardware, since the licence can arrive on the machine rather than as a separate deployment project. Firms in regulated work who need documentary evidence that something was blocked will find the reporting the weakest part of the package.
What to weigh against Microsoft Defender for Business
The nearest rival for most buyers is Microsoft Defender for Business, which arrives inside Microsoft 365 Business Premium and therefore often looks free at the point of decision. Reviewers writing on PeerSpot draw the line roughly where you would expect. Defender is credited with integration across the rest of Microsoft's estate, centralised alerting and automated investigation, while its recurring complaints are false positives, fiddly rule configuration and support staffed by junior engineers. HP is credited with the isolation itself, which reviewers describe as stopping malware rather than detecting it, and with being quick and inexpensive to deploy, while its recurring complaints are performance and application compatibility. The honest summary is that these are not the same kind of product. Defender is built to tell you what happened. Containment tries to make sure nothing happened, and tells you rather less about it afterwards.
The costs that are not on the datasheet
Two complaints recur often enough across independent reviews to treat as characteristics rather than accidents. The first is performance. Running documents and browser tabs inside virtual machines has a price, and reviewers report websites and documents opening noticeably more slowly. HP's own datasheet caps the processor share the product may take and asks for 8 GB of memory and 10 to 20 GB of free disk on the preloaded edition, which gives some sense of the overhead involved. The second is compatibility. Reviewers describe tuning work to stop line of business applications breaking inside containment, and note the product sometimes trails Windows and browser updates, occasionally requiring a support call to obtain a patch. Neither problem is fatal. Both are worth a pilot on real machines and real documents before committing a whole fleet.
Who should buy something else
Anyone running a mixed fleet should look elsewhere first. This is a Windows product, and a company with a meaningful number of Macs or Linux machines will end up buying a second tool anyway, at which point buying one tool that covers everything is simpler and usually cheaper. Organisations that already employ a security analyst, run a SIEM and want to hunt through telemetry will find the reporting thin, and should look at HP Wolf Enterprise Security or a full endpoint detection and response platform instead. Businesses whose staff live inside heavy specialist desktop software should test compatibility before signing rather than after. And anyone whose main worry is account takeover rather than malware landing on a laptop should spend the budget on multi factor authentication first, because containment does not help there.
What is not published
HP does not publish a per seat price for this product. The HP store lists a one year subscription licence without a figure attached, and HP routes commercial purchases through authorised channel partners, so the real cost depends on volume and on which partner quotes it. Anybody comparing this against a per user Microsoft subscription needs a quote in hand before the comparison means anything at all. HP also does not publish independent detection test results for the malware protection layer under this particular product name.
Where to get it
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Reviews
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