McAfee gets a three-tier alliance

BENGALURU, INDIA: McAfee announced that it is teaming with industry leaders HP ProCurve, Intel Corp and VMware Inc. The cooperation is designed to deliver best-in-class security for HP ProCurve networking products, Intel business PC platforms and the VMware platform, said a press release.

“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 CEO, McAfee.

“We're excited to work side-by-side with the world's leading names in technology to deliver on today's security needs,” added DeWalt.

McAfee and HP ProCurve have created a strategic alliance with the intent to jointly develop and deliver network security solutions. Under this agreement the partners would build security solutions that combine McAfee's information security products with HP ProCurve's networking product portfolio, it added.

"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 VP and GM, HP ProCurve.

He stated that the 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 would work with Intel to take advantage of Intel vPro technology to provide security below the operating system layer on PCs.

Specifically, McAfee would 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, it said. “Working in conjunction with McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator 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, VP, GM—Business Client Group, Intel Corporation.

VMware would ship McAfee VirusScan 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. VMware Fusion customers would 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, VP—Infrastructure Alliances, VMware.

He added that the 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