McAfee Partners with HP, Intel and VMware for Security

McAfee has announced a strategic alliance with HP ProCurve, Intel and VMware focusing on network, hardware and virtualization security.

The partnerships were announced at McAfee’s Focus 2008 Security Conference in Las Vegas and cover a large swath of security issues. According to McAfee, the company will work with HP ProCurve to develop network security products. The idea is to combine McAfee's security expertise with HP ProCurve's networking product portfolio.

Though the companies were vague on details as of press time, the joint products are aimed at simplifying networking and security.

"Together, HP ProCurve and McAfee will develop and deliver optimal secure networking solutions with the assurance of successful product interoperability for enterprise and midmarket customers,” said Marius Haas, senior vice president and general manager for HP ProCurve, in a statement.

In regards to Intel, McAfee will look to take advantage of Intel vPro technology to provide security below the operating system layer on PCs. More specifically, McAfee officials said they will use Intel vPro technology to allow IT to uncover and fix security problems on PCs outside of business hours, as well as report the health of the PC back to McAfee's ePolicy Orchestrator management console.

The company is also building on its existing relationship with VMware by shipping McAfee VirusScan Plus software with VMware Fusion, VMware's desktop virtualization product. As a result, VMware Fusion customers will effectively receive McAfee's security software at no additional cost.

"The addition of McAfee security software to VMware Fusion helps ensure that our customers can run Windows safely on their Macs,” said Shekar Ayyar, vice president, infrastructure alliances at VMware, in a statement. "In addition, McAfee's security solutions are being built to leverage VMware VMsafe technology to provide customers with better security solutions on the VMware platform than in physical environments.”