McAfee stakes its claim to mobile security market

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 21 September 2011 09:00

Business IT - Security

Intel's network and device security software subsidiary, McAfee, has unveiled its strategy - comprised of current and new products - to address the burgeoning demand for securing and managing mobile devices - especially employee-owned devices being brought into the corporate environment.

Although there are now numerous offerings available seeking to exploit this growing opportunity McAfee claims to be "unique in being able to bring mobile devices into the security infrastructure."

It is touting a three-pronged approach that comprises protection for mobile devices, protection for data on those devices and protection for mobile device applications.

For device protection McAfee offers Enterprise Mobility Management (McAfee EMM) software that is claimed to "bring the same level of security and control to mobile devices - including employee-owned smartphones and tablets - that IT applies to laptops and desktops"; anti-malware through McAfee VirusScan Mobile software; and web protection that alerts mobile devices users when they are accessing malicious sites, such as phishing sites via McAfee SiteAdvisor.

For the protection of mobile data McAfee says that McAfee EMM can prevent data leakage from jail-broken and rooted devices, and support remote backup, lock and wipe. It adds: "Additional data protection technologies are under development including the separation of business and personal data."

McAfee say it sees mobile apps as "potentially the biggest threat vector of the future," and to counter this threat it has released in beta McAfee App Alert software to inform users how apps access their personal data. The company is also expanding the scope of its Global Threat Intelligence to include mobile app reputation services to identify apps that are malicious or put privacy at risk.

McAfee says it also has app-scanning technologies that have been successfully deployed in app stores "adding a crucial layer of application security that helps vendors provide customers a safe app experience."