McAfee Outlines Security Connected Platform

The company said it plans to expand its current broad portfolio through acquisitions, development projects and partnerships to deliver integrated security solutions.

Security specialist McAfee, a subsidiary of chip maker Intel, outlined its plans to build out Security Connected, the company’s framework for how security products and services work together to prevent security breaches and cyber-attacks on businesses of all sizes.

The company said it plans to expand its current broad portfolio through acquisitions, development projects and partnerships to deliver integrated solutions and protection across mobile devices, endpoints, servers, and networks. McAfee already offers network intrusion prevention systems (IPS), next generation firewall, data lost prevention (DLP), Web and network email security with an optimized management platform.

In addition, McAfee Endpoint Security provides integrated system security that includes virtualization security, mobile protection, endpoint email security, whitelisting technology and Web safety, and protection below the operating system to help businesses to guard devices against a growing number of threats.

“Businesses are looking for integrated security solutions with built-in intelligence and policies,” Chris Christiansen, program vice president of research firm IDC’s security products and services group, said in a statement. “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.”

McAfee Global Threat Intelligence (GTI) monitors the behavior of millions of Websites globally and associated domain assets such as email servers and file servers to identify anomalous and potentially dangerous behavior. By establishing and tracking a reputation score for these millions of sites, the GTI platform can identify new cyber-threats as they occur and allow McAfee endpoint, network, and gateway products to protect users from emerging threats.

“Security is now a boardroom-level discussion,” McAfee Chief Technology Officer Michael Fey said in a statement. “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.”

Last month, the company released its annual 2013 Threat Predictions report, highlighting the top threats McAfee Labs foresees for 2013. Using its proprietary Global Threat Intelligence (GTI), the McAfee Labs team analyzed data on malware, vulnerabilities and online threats in 2012 to predict which trends will increase in 2013. In the coming year, McAfee Labs said it expects that threats to mobile devices will become even more of a focus of cyber-criminals, the influence of the hacktivist group “Anonymous” will decline and large-scale attacks that attempt to destroy infrastructure will increase.