McAfee

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For other uses, see the computer security company McAfee, Inc..

McAfee, Inc. (NYSE: MFE) is an antivirus and computer security company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It markets McAfee VirusScan and related security products and services, including the IntruShield, Entercept, and Foundstone brands.

Products

McAfee currently develops many security tools for the PC, both for corporate and home users, including:

• McAfee VirusScan (antivirus, some antispyware components)
• McAfee Total Protection for Small Business (antivirus, antispyware, firewall [1]
• McAfee Personal Firewall Plus (firewall)
• McAfee SpamKiller (antispam)
• McAfee Privacy Service (antiabuse, plus Anti-Phishing)
• McAfee AntiSpyware (full antispyware, plus Anti-Phishing)
• McAfee QuickClean (secure shredder, file cleanup)
• McAfee SiteAdvisor (free) (alerts users when entering dangerous sites, basing on downloads, popups and number of e-mail received)
• McAfee SecurityCenter (free) (gateway to managing most McAfee services, as well as Windows updates management)

Criticism

McAfee security products, as are all security products of this type, are widely criticized for:

• slowing down operating systems, particularly at startup
• being bundled as a free trial on eMachines and other systems.

In addition, its GUI is not based on standard Windows graphic interface libraries; instead, the Internet Explorer rendering engine is used.

Issues

Many McAfee users are experiencing many issues with all of the McAfee products, excluding McAfee SiteAdvisor and McAfee AntiSpyware. Issues include:

• VirusScan not scanning all files/hangs/crashes/randomly disappears
• Components randomly disabling
• Incompatibility with software
• Disconnecting the user from the internet (2006 editions only)
• Software randomly corrupting (2006 editions only)

Many of these issues are experienced with McAfee 2005 and 2006 editions of their software. As of August 28th, a patch is supposed to be released for 2006 edition users that should resolve many of these issues.

Future

McAfee has released two new security packages, McAfee VirusScan Plus and McAfee Total Protection. McAfee Total Protection is the new security suite, containing all of the McAfee security tools, while McAfee VirusScan Plus contains the basic security needs (antivirus, firewall, and antispyware). Both these products are based on McAfee's new technology, codenamed "Falcon" which was released on August 1st 2006. They are meant to compete with Symantec's Norton 360 and Microsoft's Windows OneCare. They debuted alongside an updated Internet Security Suite.

History

The company was founded in 1987 as McAfee Associates, named for its founder John McAfee. Network Associates was formed in 1997 as a merger of McAfee Associates and Network General. In the year 2004, a major restructuring occurred. In the spring, the company sold the Magic Solutions business to Remedy, a subsidiary of BMC Software. In the summer of 2004, the company sold the Sniffer Technologies business to Network General. Also, the company changed its name to McAfee to reflect its focus on security-related technologies.

Among other companies bought and sold by McAfee (formerly known as Network Associates) is Trusted Information Systems, which developed the Firewall Toolkit, which was the open source foundation for the commercial Gauntlet Firewall, which was later sold by McAfee to Secure Computing Corporation. Network Associates, as a result of brief ownership of TIS Labs/NAI Labs/Network Associates Laboratories/McAfee Research, was highly influential in the world of Open Source software, as that organization produced portions of the Linux, FreeBSD, and Darwin operating systems, developed portions of the BIND name server software, as well as SNMP version 3.

On April 5, 2006, McAfee bought out SiteAdvisor, a service that warns users if downloading software or filling out forms on a site may obtain malware or spam.

In the news

In January 2006, McAfee agreed to pay a fine of $50M to the SEC for a practice known as channel stuffing that served to inflate their revenue to their investors.

See also

• McAfee Coliseum

External links

• McAfee
• Network General
• Remedy
• Dr. Solomon
• McAfee Total Protection for Small Business
• McAfee Consumer Beta