Citing unnamed sources, the Journal said that the deal could be announced as soon as Monday. ArcSight sells a well-regarded product that gives system administrators a way to monitor their networks and activity logs for signs of hacking or unauthorized activity.
The company had been a rumored acquisition target for the past few weeks, with Oracle, HP, and IBM all named as possible suitors.
ArcSight could not immediately be reached for comment. An HP spokeswoman declined to comment on the report.
If the report is true, it will be HP's second big acquisition in recent weeks. On Sept. 2 it ended a bidding war with Dell, agreeing to pay $2.35 billion for virtualized storage vendor 3Par.
