Network Associates Inc. this week will unveil the details of its enterprisewide intrusion protection strategy, including the rollout of a new product.
The new strategy relies on technologies and products that the company obtained through its recent acquisitions and is based on the concepts of host- and network-based intrusion protection.
The first new product to emerge from the plan will be McAfee Entercept Desktop, which will be available next month. The application blocks malicious behavior on the desktop before it can affect the security of the system. It uses a mixture of behavior-based and signature-based detection to identify unwanted processes.
The desktop solution will be managed initially by McAfee Entercept Management System, which handles policies and configuration changes. The company plans to integrate the solution with its ePO (ePolicy Orchestrator) console by the end of next year and eliminate the need for redundant management systems, said Ryan McGee, director of product marketing for systems security solutions at NAI, based in Santa Clara, Calif.
By the middle of next year, NAI will release new versions of three of its products, which will add new intrusion protection capabilities. VirusScan will get some firewall functionality, as will Entercept for Desktops and Servers. Also at that time, ePO will begin to take input from Entercept for Desktops in preparation for phasing out the older console and will gain the ability to listen passively on networks to detect new devices and check their security configurations. NAI also plans to partner with some VPN, router and switch manufacturers to enable that functionality for those devices.
The goal is to combine all the agents used by McAfees products into one bundle that will be able to handle a wide variety of tasks, McGee said.