The cybersecurity giant McAfee has released details of its network security strategy to give enterprises a secure and cost effective security solution.

McAfee’s new network security strategy has been developed to address the needs and desires of business and enterprises. Many of these concerns are focused around the slowdown in today’s economy, which appears to be driving cybercriminals to be more and more of a threat to businesses’ cybersecurity.

In conjunction with Purdue University, McAfee has discovered that businesses worldwide are losing an estimated one trillion dollars a year through cybercrime. Malware is on the rise, with McAfee reporting that in the year 2008 they saw more new malware than in past years combined.

McAfee has therefore responded to the growing concerns and worries of its consumers, by ensuring that their security solutions are cost effective and come from a single vendor.

Dan Ryan, executive vice president of Network Security Business Unit at McAfee, said: “From conversations with our customers, it is clear that enterprises spend an enormous amount of time, money and administrative overhead managing multiple security products. McAfee’s comprehensive line of network security products eliminates the need for multi-vendor solutions and ensures the absolute lowest total cost of ownership available today.”

The McAfee strategy integrates all areas of McAfee’s portfolio of products, including: network firewalls, web and e-mail security, data loss prevention, and McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator provides a centralised security management console. The security is maintained by McAfee’s global threat intelligence, which is powered by McAfee Avert Labs.

Chris Christiansen, vice president, Security Practice, IDC: “Organizations must take a more unified approach to security. The days of managing network defence, Web and messaging security and data security as separate activities simply won’t succeed in today’s economic and threat environment. Effective Network Security must have global intelligence and must be integrated into the broader organizational security management infrastructure. Vendors that deliver these levels of integration in a complete suite will be successful as this will lower overall cost of ownership for organizations. For the next three to five years, reducing cost of ownership will drive security investments.”

McAfee is delivering their strategy within their Network Security Business Unit.

Guest Article by Neil Camp

McAfee, a world leader in computer security, has announced the release of McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator 4.5 software to advance its protection to businesses and governments.

The drive to keep protection to maintain cybersecurity in some of the most vital areas of national and business security, comes as McAfee Avert Labs releases data showing attacks on businesses increases 500% over the last year.

On top of this, McAfee’s research also indicates that some large company or enterprise networks can use as many as 200 different security providers to try to keep their computers secure. This naturally dilutes the power of any of these providers to keep a company network secure, as well as costing the business significant amounts of money.

The McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator 4.5 software is therefore an answer to some of the main problems of business and its cybersecurity today.

McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator satisfied four main elements that McAfee believed all organisations should take into account when securing their network, including an integrated defence and real-time threat intelligence with in-the-cloud protection.

McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator has a number of additional highlights to ensure it can maintain the security of even the largest networks, for example:

• Improved enterprise scalability: new architecture is multi-layered, featuring: load balancing, failover support, with awareness of multiple servers to improve policy management and reporting.
• Enhanced Web-based, customizable interface: streamlined navigation and reporting enhancements provide a visibility of the organization’s security. A more powerful and intuitive interface means end-to-end visibility across the whole security environment
• Improved workflow and automation framework: this helps to minimize vulnerabilities and save administrator time. Automated protection is based on user profiles instead of just the system or device. As well as this a new help desk ticketing integration with HP OpenView and BMC Remedy helps to automate any workflow tasks.

Matt Fairbanks, senior vice president of product and solution marketing at McAfee, said: “IT organizations want to consolidate and standardize on a strategic security partner to deliver the highest protection levels while driving down cost. With McAfee’s unmatched network and systems security portfolio, powerful compliance technologies, real-time Global Threat Intelligence, and a security management platform based on ePolicy Orchestrator, McAfee is transforming the way businesses approach security.”

Guest Article by Neil Camp

McAfee, one of the world’s leaders in computer security solutions and technology, has added 11 new partners to its McAfee Security Innovation Alliance programme (SIA).

The McAfee Security Innovation Alliance is a programme designed to partner their own technology with that of others, to ensure development of security products, and that these products can be integrated into customer environments.

Ed Barry, senior director of McAfee Security Innovation Alliance said: “In 2007, McAfee made the strategic decision to unlock its technology architecture, allowing integrations with the McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator platform, Vulnerability Management Service and Endpoint Encryption solutions. Today, the program includes more than 65 partners that are collaborating with us to maximize the value of existing customer investments, to reduce time to problem resolution and to ultimately lower operational costs. We are proud of our growth and look forward to the programme’s continued success.”

McAfee’s 11 new partners come from the United States and Europe, and join the other partners in McAfee’s programme to develop global security.

By bringing in these new partners, McAfee’s breadth in its portfolio is extended with new use cases. These cover a number of areas, including database security, security event management, theft and forensics, wireless security and data backup.

Working with these partners, McAfee can develop comprehensive security as well as compliance solutions. To do this, McAfee maintains an open architecture and provides a software development kit, alongside testing integrations for compatibility.

Six partners which have been promoted to Technology Partner status have been listed to include: AirPatrol, Guidance Software, HID Global, Skybox Security, UPEK Inc. and Voltage Security. They have also been awarded McAfee Compatibility designation.

Alongside this, McAfee has added nine new Associate Partners to join the Security Innovation Alliance, which will be working with McAfee to complete their integrations. These include: Insightix, Intrinsic, MANDIANT, Netcordia, NetWitness, Precise Biometrics, SignaCert, Toshiba America Information Systems and Tufin.

McAfee also runs an invitation-only Sales Teaming Programme. Those partners chosen to be invited help to complement the existing McAfee products. Those who have been welcomed on to the programme include: AirPatrol, Absolute Software, Prevari, Triumfant and Voltage Security.

Guest Article by Neil Camp

Internet and computer security giant McAfee has outlined details of a Security-as-a-Service strategy to deliver security to businesses large or small as a service in the cloud.

McAfee’s plan to harness the cloud in such a way that means that McAfee can provide an affective and functional portfolio of Security-as-a-Service products to companies and enterprises large or small. These are more cost efficient as they are a single vendor solution to security concerns, which is particularly attractive in this time of economic downturn.

The development of this type of security service has been done in line with growing customer demand. McAfee are reacting to the evidence that shows that IT departments are losing numbers and being stretched to their limits; on top of this Gartner has claimed that even though security risks are on the increase, it looks as though worldwide IT spending will decline at the end of the year 2009.

A benefit of McAfee’s development of security products as a service in the cloud, is that the delivery option of one of the most important aspects of computer usage is flexible. Marc Olesen, SVP and General Manager of McAfee Software-as-a-Service said: “Our customers have told us they want flexibility in their delivery options. It is clear that IT resources need to focus on initiatives that are business critical, while consolidating vendors.”

McAfee’s Security-as-a-Service products works by using combined global threat intelligence from Artemis, TrustedSource and SiteAdvisor, and accumulates millions of data to compile real-time profiles of any suspicious activity. Deviations of the behavior can also be looked out for, ensuring a safeguard against rapidly developing threats. The products deliver web and e-mail protection, including malware, viruses and phishing attacks. All this is done through McAfee’s harnessing of the cloud to provide a unique cloud based management console.

The McAfee Security-as-a-Service technology offers a wide variety in its portfolio, including; McAfee Total Protection Service; McAfee Total Protection Service Extended; McAfee Web Protection Service; and McAfee Vulnerability Assessment.

The plans to harness the cloud in line with developing the Security-as-a-Service provision is there to meet market and customer demands as the ever present need for internet security increases.

Guest Article by Neil Camp

McAfee, one of the world leaders in computer security solutions, has sponsored a survey by IDC multimedia white paper which concludes organisations are receiving poor returns on their investments into firewalls.

McAfee sponsored the survey, entitled ‘The State of Today’s Firewall Management Challenges’ to investigate the state of firewall protection. The IDC surveyed 206 firewall managers and IT executives across the United States and Europe, and came up with some damning insights into the effectiveness of firewalls and the affect of their vulnerability on the businesses.

The survey comes to a number of conclusions, including:

• On average, the enterprises questioned in the survey suffered an estimated 300 network attacks a year
• This grew to 1200 attacks per year for 10% of the organisations
• Losses from data breaches suffered by the enterprises was equivalent to more than 75% of their costs for operating firewalls
• Gaps in the protection were common as the firewall rules grew extensively; the larger the rule set, the harder it is to keep the system safe
• These rules can number in the thousands or tens of thousands
• In managing these firewall rules, recipients of the survey reported that business responsiveness was reduced

Charles Kolodgy, research director at IDC, said: “What’s apparent from the survey is that firewall management is a key challenge facing organizations today. The more rules included in the firewall, the harder it is to manage and less effective it can become. Firewall rules don’t make an organization more secure, but better rule management and improved firewall technology does.”

Greg Brown, Senior Director of Network Security Product Marketing at McAfee, added: “There’s a huge disconnect between the traditional firewall and the level of protection required for most enterprise environments. Firewalls must offer comprehensive security features without increasing complexity. Additionally, rules management must be simplified and should enforce the actual business security policy in order for organizations to receive the maximum benefit.”

McAfee has responded to these issues by creating firewall protection that can keep away the volume of threats that are encountered today. Their next generation firewall will use behaviour analysis and rule management.

Guest Article by Neil Camp