McAfee recently at its FOCUS 2008 Security Conference announced that it is teaming with HP ProCurve, Intel, and VMware. The cooperation is designed to deliver best-in-class security for HP ProCurve networking products, Intel business PC platforms and the VMware platform.
“The era of providing complete protection simply by installing antivirus software on a PC has long passed. In today's world of sophisticated malware, targeted threats, and multi-stage attacks, security needs to be everywhere,” said Dave DeWalt, president and chief executive officer of McAfee. “We're excited to work side-by-side with the world's leading names in technology to deliver on today's security needs.”
McAfee and HP ProCurve have created a strategic alliance with the intent to jointly develop and deliver network security solutions. Under this agreement, McAfee and HP ProCurve will build security solutions that combine McAfee's industry leading information security products with HP ProCurve's networking product portfolio. The joint solutions will simplify networking and security from the edge to the network core, delivering uncompromising security protection for companies of all sizes.
“Together, HP ProCurve and McAfee will develop and deliver optimal secure networking solutions with the assurance of successful product interoperability for enterprise and mid-market customers,” said Marius Haas, senior vice president and general manager, HP ProCurve. “This agreement demonstrates the ability of HP ProCurve to provide a flexible and standards-based solution to optimize deployment of security solutions for enterprise and mid-market customers.”
McAfee has joined the HP ProCurve Alliance, a formal program that enables the creation of networking solutions to provide resellers with pre-qualified, open-standards solutions that have been thoroughly tested and certified for interoperability.
McAfee will work with Intel to take advantage of Intel vPro technology to provide security below the operating system layer on PCs. This forthcoming McAfee technology will provide organizations using PCs featuring Intel vPro technology with improved security and reporting while requiring fewer IT resources.
Specifically, McAfee will use Intel vPro technology to allow IT to discover and remediate security problems on PCs outside of business hours and report the health of the PC back to McAfee's award-winning ePolicy Orchestrator management console.
“Working in conjunction with McAfee(R) ePolicy Orchestrator(R) management console, Intel vPro technology enables IT to keep PCs up to date with the latest security patches, even in off hours when PCs are turned off,” said Rob Crooke, Vice President, General Manager, Business Client Group, Intel Corporation.
McAfee is taking advantage of Intel technology in three key areas: encryption and theft deterrent technologies, security management and virtualization. McAfee had previously announced an initiative to place McAfee data encryption on platforms featuring Intel vPro technology using Intel's Anti-Theft Technology.
Building on its existing relationship with VMware, McAfee today announced that VMware is shipping McAfee VirusScan(R) Plus software with VMware Fusion — VMware's award-winning desktop virtualization product for running Windows applications side-by-side with Mac applications on any Intel-based Mac. Today's announcement means that VMware Fusion customers will receive antivirus, antispyware and Windows firewall software from McAfee 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 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.”
Protecting Macs that run Windows using VMware Fusion is just one of the efforts McAfee and VMware are developing to enhance the security of virtual environments. In September, McAfee unveiled McAfee Total Protection for Virtualization suite, a complete and scalable security solution spanning physical and virtual servers, desktops and networks, optimized for the VMware platform. Earlier this year at VMworld Europe 2008, McAfee was the first security company to adopt and publicly demonstrate VMware VMsafe.
VMsafe helps security vendors combat the challenges of compliance, management and security in ways previously not possible in physical environments by enabling them to develop solutions that benefit from better visibility into the memory, CPU, disk and I/O systems in VMware environments.
