McAfee, Inc., the global leader in Intrusion Prevention and Security Risk Management, lately unveiled McAfee Total Protection.
McAfee plans to take the wraps off a set of security solutions aimed at helping small businesses and enterprises oversee the protection of corporate assets though a single management interface.
The Santa Clara, Calif., company is phasing out its current product lineup for business customers and is introducing McAfee Total Protection. The new name holds much of the existing McAfee security software, such as antivirus, antispyware, firewall and spam protection, but the company has improved integration and manageability, it said.
Designed to redefine the way in which companies manage security solutions, McAfee Total Protection is the industry’s first and only offering to combine and manage all the elements of a comprehensive system security solution through a single console and agent platform. With McAfee Total Protection, McAfee SecurityAlliance partners can help companies of all sizes improve security while reducing the complexity of managing security — without compromise, freeing up valuable financial and human resources for other vital corporate needs.
McAfee will offer four flavors of McAfee Total Protection, two aimed at organizations with more than 100 computers that need protection, and two for smaller organizations, the company said.
McAfee Total Protection is a single concept with four distinct offerings for customers of all sizes and needs. For the first time, these customers can purchase a single solution with proven award-winning technology that is tightly integrated into a single console. The end result is increased security, policy compliance and significant ongoing cost savings.
McAfee Total Protection for enterprise users leverages a single agent platform already deployed in more than 40 million endpoints to provide everything a business needs for complete endpoint security and network access control, today and into the future. McAfee Total Protection for enterprise includes anti-virus for all tiers of the network, anti-spyware, anti-spam, desktop firewall, host intrusion prevention and a complete network access control system — all managed by a single console. McAfee Total Protection for small business builds upon McAfee’s heritage of delivering security and software-as-a-service, ensuring an "always on, always up-to-date," security environment. McAfee, which pioneered software as-a-service seven years ago, now has more than two million customers protected under this model.
With the repackaging, McAfee is building on its existing strategy to offer products that are integrated and can be centrally managed. "We are redefining the way customers acquire, deploy, manage and operate security products," said Vimal Solanki, a McAfee spokesman.
For the first time, McAfee is adding host-intrusion prevention to its product bundles for larger organizations, called McAfee Total Protection Enterprise, Solanki said. The top-end bundle, McAfee Total Protection Enterprise-Advanced, also gets Network Access Control, another first, Solanki said.
Many companies and industry analysts point to a growing need for a tightly integrated, single solution managed through one console.
Attacks on corporate networks, corporate PCs and consumers will continue to increase in sophistication, frequency and severity; defending against this onslaught requires a comprehensive and integrated security solution, according to Chris Christiansen, IDC VP of Security Products and Services.
“Information Security has clearly become a boardroom issue. Organizations must look upon information security as an investment, and like any business function search for every pound of efficiency," said Bryan Palma, founder of Ponic, an information risk consulting company, and former CISO with PepsiCo. Security is no exception — senior business leaders expect cost savings, tangible performance metrics, and clear returns for their information security investments. Therefore, integration, consolidation and maximization of existing investments are the primary drivers for results.
These attacks will drive the demand for more proactive security products and services. As the complexity of managing security increases, customers are demanding more integrated solutions. IT security is increasingly moving away from a focus on a single type of protection, such as anti-virus, toward a focus on broad protection from a wide range of emerging threats to enterprise security.
Furthermore, host-intrusion prevention is making its debut in McAfee’s central management console, the ePolicy Orchestrator. The intrusion prevention software had its own management console–integration with ePolicy Orchestrator has been a long requested feature, Solanki said.
McAfee’s (ePO) has the infrastructure to provide and manage these services, according to Eric Winsborrow, vice president of product marketing at McAfee, Santa Clara, Calif.
“McAfee handles management features through ePO in the same way we update virus signatures,” he said.
Eric Ahlm, director of emerging technologies at Vigilar, an Atlanta-based McAfee partner, said the high cost of infrastructure upgrades needed to implement NAC has been a barrier. However, the new category of security products that provide the same functionality without the infrastructure costs is a cost-effective alternative, he noted.
Adding NAC will enable higher-end security VARs to address a wider range of customers, said Dave Roberts, senior vice president of North America channel sales at McAfee. “Partners can now afford to be antivirus agnostic in their product strategy and still add a lot of value because NAC gives them an upside beyond just margins on sales,” he said.
McAfee Total Protection is also designed to offer McAfee SecurityAlliance partners tremendous business value, providing new opportunities for highly profitable sustained business with their customers. The integrated security solution helps partners deliver comprehensive protection against newly emerging threats coupled with a service component that drives value and creates a trusted advisor relationship.
Total Protection allows partners to provide services to end users with McAfee handling the back-end security infrastructure, Winsborrow said. “This model allows partners looking to get into the service model to get their feet wet,” he said.
McAfee continues to demonstrate its commitment to its value-added reseller channel, and the launch of Total Protection is a welcome addition to the product portfolio, said Casper Zublin, Jr., chief executive officer at DynTek. McAfee has made the effort to understand our business and by providing integrated security solutions that we can wrap our services around, they have acknowledged one of the most profitable areas of our business.
McAfee’s Elite and Premier partners that have moved away from antivirus to concentrate on McAfee’s appliance business now have motivation to rethink their approach, Roberts said. “Although antivirus has become commoditized, [Total Protection] gives partners a reason to go in and talk holistically to customers from a McAfee standpoint,” he said.
This is about helping businesses reduce the complexity of managing security by providing comprehensive protection, said Kevin Weiss, president, McAfee, Inc. "Our core focus is to protect and mitigate risk for customers and their valuable data in an increasingly complex and regulated world. Now, for the first time ever, businesses can choose a security solution that is completely integrated from a management perspective and that significantly reduces costs; eliminates redundancy and offers better protection."
For smaller organizations, McAfee is adding a hosted e-mail security service to the product bundle. These bundles are called McAfee Total Protection for Small Business-Advanced and McAfee Total Protection for Small Business.
While McAfee is bundling its products, customers can still cherry-pick and choose not to purchase antivirus, for example, Solanki said.
But bundling is the future, said Yankee Group analyst Andrew Jaquith. "This is probably the most important announcement McAfee has made all year," he said. It is a good announcement for them and a good announcement for the industry. It helps make this idea mainstream that this is the future.
Although Spain’s Panda Software was sooner than McAfee with deep integration of its security software, McAfee still leads its main rivals Symantec, Trend Micro and Computer Associates, Jaquith said.
Symantec has articulated a roadmap that will do similar kinds of things. However they have quite a bit integration to do until they get there, he said, pointing to several acquisitions Symantec has done, including WholeSecurity, PlatformLogic and Sygate. I believe they are nine months behind McAfee.
Availability and Pricing
McAfee Total Protection solutions for enterprises will be available April 17 and are priced between $68 and $77 per user for 1,000 nodes, and April 25 for small business users through McAfee and its channel partners and are priced between $30 and $45 per user for 50 nodes.