McAfee announces new network security platform 24 April, 2008 By Vanessa Ho

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"What we are seeing is a proliferation of security products where there is a product for every kind of threat," said Vimal Solanki, senior director of product marketing with McAfee. "Customers are at a point where they are getting bombarded and overwhelmed with the individual point products, the associated management console and the operational aspects that come along with that."

He added that there was strong customer feedback were they wanted to acquire solutions that were easier for them to deploy, manage and operate.

"Customers were telling us less is more and don't sell me a new product for every new threat but give me a solution that has some longevity and will work today as well as protect tomorrow's threat. That's what sets the stage for McAfee's Total Protection for Network strategy."

The Total Protection for Network offers protection not only at the edge of the network but within it and is comprised of two components. The first is the McAfee Content Security Blade Server, an enterprise and service provider class web and e-mail security platform.

The Content Security Blade Server features a 14-slot blade that provides a range of content security applications including gateway anti-virus, gateway anti-spyware, URL filtering, malware protection, e-mail protection, web protection, phishing protection and McAfee's SiteAdvisor.

"All the content that flows through web and e-mail is now protected with this platform," explained Solanki.

The product has also been designed to scale easily from 700,000 to five million messages per hour and 50,000 web users simply by adding more blades. Solanki said that by May 15, the Content Security Blade Server will be able to scale to 10 million messages per hour with a software upgrade.

The blade server also features built-in failover and redundancy, a built-in resource manager which removes the need for external load balancer and the ability to "hot-swap" blades.

Solanki said that one of the benefits of having the Content Security Blade Server as part of McAfee's Total Protection for Network suite is that it significantly reduces the product acquisition cost including power and cooling. It also reduces space requirements, helping companies decrease the physical footprint needed to manage security.

Additionally, organizations benefit from lower cost of ownership by reducing the need to purchase and manage multiple point products. McAfee also offers flat rate pricing (no per user fees) which provides significant cost savings.

For channel partners, Solanki said that they can position the Content Security Blade Server to organizations that are looking for high performance in web and e-mail security.

"Roughly two-thirds of enterprise customers are not adequately protected against web security threats so it is a Greenfield opportunity for our partners to propose this product," he added.

The second product that makes up the Total Protection for Network suite is the McAfee Network Security Platform (formerly known as McAfee IntruShield Network Intrusion Prevention). Two models are available: the M-6050 and the M-8000 that offer 5Gbps and 10Gbsp performance respectively.

The McAfee Network Security Platform is designed to meet the growth of IPS in the network core and data center, as well as the rapid growth of high-performance 10 Gigabit Ethernet networks.

"If you look at Fortune 500 organizations, over 90 per cent of them have moved to a 10 Gigabit Ethernet infrastructure for switching and routing but unfortunately there is no true 10 Gigabit network IPS in the market today," said Solanki.

He added that the Network Security Platform provides up to 10Gbps wire speed throughput with all security enabled such as network IDS/IPS, virtual IPS technology and encrypted threat protection. Eventually network access control will be added.

It also features zero-day prevention, blocks hacking attempts, prevents DoS/DDoS attacks, keeps systems up-to-date with current security patches and offers infrastructure protection and helps companies meet regulatory compliance and governance regulations.

Solanki said that with the movement of organizations to a 10 Gigabit Ethernet environment, it provides a ripe opportunity for partners to offer the McAfee Network Security Platform to their end users.

Total Protection for Network can be managed with McAfee's ePolicy Orchestrator (ePO) and the only thing that users need to add to the Total Protection for Network suite is a firewall.

Solanki explained the reason why McAfee is not offering a firewall to the suite is there are mature firewall vendors on the market like Cisco, Check Point and Juniper that already offer a stable firewall product.

McAfee Network Security Platform and McAfee Content Security Blade Server are available now through McAfee's network of channel partners.

James Quin, senior research analyst with Info-Tech Research Group, said that the McAfee Total Protection for Network suite continues the trend of the market going towards a greater level of integration of security products.

"It is a trend that is necessary and is going to increase protection and ultimately is the right thing for the end consumer," said Quin. "When license renewals do come up, it is best to start looking at buying tools that offer an integrated suite of capabilities than individual point products."

He added that a solution like McAfee's Total Protection for Network can only improve security and manageability as well as take some of the stress load off the end security worker that will make them more effective and efficient.

As well, Quin said that the Total Protection for Network suite pushes McAfee in a leadership position in terms offering an all encompassing product.

"McAfee and other providers doing the same thing are putting a stake in the ground and saying the status quo of just releasing point product hasn't been working for the end user and we are going to do something about it."