Wired for security
Published: 16 Sep 2004 15:40 BST
McAfee has always been synonymous with PC security, but chief executive George Samenuk intends to make a priority of protecting wireless networks and voice communications over the Internet.
New PC viruses and their variants have been appearing at unprecedented rates this year. Coupled with the unabated growth of mobile computing and other technologies, that means there are ever-greater security challenges for businesses.
This is why McAfee has decided to focus on mobile platform protection of late, said Samenuk, especially in the third-generation, or 3G, cellular network market. That, and divesting its noncore businesses, have been his key areas of focus.
"We are in a position to do something in this world that can make a difference immediately," he told ZDNet UK sister site CNETAsia during a recent visit to Singapore. "You get audiences from all over the world who all want to talk about this area because it is their vital interest to keep their governments and businesses running."
The company recently concluded the sale of its Sniffer division, which provides network monitoring, to a group of investors. That was the last piece in McAfee's previously "convoluted" vision, he said.
McAfee, he stressed, will focus solely on security from now on. In a wide-ranging interview, Samenuk articulated more of his company's plans for the near future.
Q: How serious is the virus situation now?
A: Well, in the first quarter this year, we saw more attacks than all of 2003, and 2003 was the largest attack year in our history. And we are seeing the hacker move from just PC to everything that's tied to technology. And I've read that there are now attacks on Apple's iTunes. We are also seeing PDAs and 3G phones being attacked. And Internet phones are getting hit like crazy right now.
How worrying is the current trend of attacks and reinfection by bug variants?
It shows that hackers are trying different routes of attacks and becoming more aware. We just had a variant on Bagle two weeks ago on medium alert. What the hackers did is they took the original attacks and refined it to try different areas where they could infiltrate the customers' network. So we are seeing the hackers become much more aware of how they can make their attacks more effective, using variants of the original attack. This says to me that you better have blocking and antivirus capabilities everywhere, at the desktop, server and gateway, because one just doesn't cover it all.
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