McAfee draws up aggressive plans for 2013 - pins hopes on Security Connected

When organizations deploy many separate technologies, gaps are created which lead to breaches and compliance violations and allows attacks to happen. For instance in recent times, the attacks such as Flame and Shamoon exposed vulnerabilities in the point security products.

Additionally, the biggest day-to-day cost driver for organizations is operations including managing multiple security consoles, numerous policies and rules, and constant updates. To tackle these inefficient silos, Security Connected delivers business efficiency, predictability and actionable information.

In this backdrop McAfee has recently announced its strategy for building upon its 'Security Connected' - a framework in which security products and services work together to safeguard businesses with better protection from new types of attacks.

McAfee will expand its current broad portfolio through strategic acquisitions, development projects and key partnerships to deliver more integrated solutions and comprehensive protection across mobile devices, endpoints, servers, and network through an extensible framework.

Quips Chris Christiansen, program vice president, Security Products and Services group at IDC, "Businesses are looking for integrated security solutions with built in intelligence and policies. The changes in business today will require the move from simply securing components, to understanding and measuring the security of a business system as a whole."

Security in the limelight

Naturally, the evolving nature of threats calls for a well-rounded pro-active security strategy and no wonder mant progressive enterprises have CISO's in addition to CIOs. Reflecting on this Michael Fey, CTO at McAfee says, "Security is now a boardroom level discussion. The stakes are high, and businesses require a new model that gives them a comprehensive picture of their entire IT infrastructure. The industry has been built on a historical thought process that will not support the demands of the future. We must move to having a real-time understanding and response capability if we are to meet the needs of the future."

Sources at McAfee say that ‘Security Connected' brings network and endpoint together through an extensible framework, centralized management and integrated with global threat intelligence delivers unprecedented visibility across all threat vectors. At the core of McAfee Security Connected are the principles of integrated solutions, built-in intelligence, and advanced management offered with an extensible architecture for partners that no other vendor can provide.

As we deep dive into what this whole concept of integrated management and look at the key elements McAfee offers, it is centered on a suite of solutions. For instance ‘Security Connected' cuts across:

McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator - with over a decade of development, it is widely acknowledged as the most advanced and scalable security management software in the industry. McAfee has innovated and changed the market with the first enterprise management architecture, scaling to over 250,000 nodes from a single server, and running on over 100 mn endpoints.

 

McAfee Enterprise Security Manager - enables business with true, real-time situational awareness and the speed and scale required to identify critical threats, respond intelligently, and ensure continuous compliance monitoring. McAfee Enterprise Security Manager is built for big security data - featuring a specialized security information management back-end that delivers unsurpassed speed, intelligence and scalability.

Company sources also say that McAfee has the broadest portfolio of security solutions from devices to data to networks, supported by hardware-enhanced security and informed by global threat intelligence. The compny is pitching on its ‘Network Security' solution that will continue to be an important focus within its ‘Security Connected'.

Meanwhile endpoints are critical as well. Here McAfee says it has redefined device security with integrated system security that includes virtualization security, mobile protection, endpoint email security, whitelisting technology and web safety, and protection below the OS to allow businesses to guard devices against the latest threats with fewer IT resources.

Up Ahead

In Q1, McAfee will announce enhancements to build out its advanced malware protection offerings like McAfee Global Threat Intelligence (GTI) monitors the behavior of millions of Web sites globally and associated domain assets (email servers, file servers, etc.) to identify anomalous and potentially dangerous behavior.

By establishing and tracking a reputation score for these millions of sites, McAfee GTI can identify new cyberthreats as they occur and empower McAfee endpoint, network, and gateway products to protect users from new and emerging threats. Only McAfee Global Threat Intelligence is capable of identifying and blocking threats emanating from file, web, email, and network sources.

Hardware-Enhanced Security protects businesses from emerging stealthy and targeted attacks that take place below the operating system. Through innovation with Intel, McAfee Deep Defender and McAfee ePO Deep Command extend client security beyond the operating system.

McAfee is also aggressively pitching on its ‘Open Architecture' and claims that it is the only security vendor that has opened up its systems to connect with other vendors and has created a network of more than 150 partners integrating with the McAfee Security Connected framework.

The McAfee Security Innovation Alliance is a program that allows businesses to evolve their solutions to meet changing needs with minimal cost and disruption.

The partner ecosystem extends McAfee's security and compliance infrastructure into the areas that businesses care about most, from forensics to application security to power management. McAfee and its partners are working with businesses to develop solutions for the needs of today and the future.