Once upon a time, personal computers dominated the market by landslide figures.  In the past decade or so, however, Apple has successfully risen to great heights in the computer industry, giving personal computers a run for their money.  Today, Apple's Mac computers and laptops are among some of the most desirable computing systems in the market.  With their sleek designs, innovative engineering, convenient functionality, and intuitive designs, Apple Macs are becoming a popular choice for both personal and commercial use.  Another reason that Macs have gained popularity, fame, and droves of supporters is because the Mac is less prone to malware and other forms of cyber attacks.  McAfee wants to take Mac security to a whole new level with their new software called McAfee Endpoint Protection for Mac.  Here's an overview of this new piece of software for the Mac.

1.  Gain universal protection from McAfee

McAfee has long been one of the top contenders in security software and the company is making a bold move with their new software.  Although Apple loves to advertise that Macs are generally safer from malware than PCs, this doesn't mean that Macs are completely free from threat.  McAfee Endpoint Protection, however, provides universal protection against all kinds of malware including viruses, phishing attacks, exploits, and spyware.

2.  Security compliance and management is a cinch

Another likable feature of McAfee's Endpoint Protection is that it makes it easy and convenient to manage and monitor security features across multiple computers.  The software allows you to set your security standards that other computers must meet.  When you set your security policies, the program will report on and enforce these policies depending on your settings.  Furthermore, McAfee Endpoint Protection for Mac also gives you access to a web-based console for managing both your Mac and Windows endpoints.  The software is also fully functional and integrated with the McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator.

List of other features in McAfee Endpoint Protection for Mac

-  Mac look and feel:  One of the things that many Mac-users like is the intuitive layout of Apple operating systems and programs.  McAfee does a good job if imitating the convenient and intuitive look and feel of Apple software in the Endpoint Protection program.
-  Proactive desktop firewall:  The software comes with a firewall that covers both inbound and outbound traffic to help prevent attacks coming through your network.
-  Anti-spyware protection:  Spyware can lead to numerous security, privacy, and performance issues, which is why McAfee has included anti-spyware functionality to help stop and prevent any spyware threats to your Mac.
-  Application control:  McAfee Endpoint Protection also allows you to monitor, allow, or deny certain applications on your Mac, giving your control over potentially malicious programs that may change your system settings.
-  Top-notch anti-virus technology:  McAfee is a big name in the anti-virus industry and Endpoint Protection for Mac gives you that reliable, proven, and comprehensive virus protection that consumers have come to expect from McAfee.

Discuss this another things in ixdownloads security forum.

As a top-notch provider of security software, McAfee was predicted to have outstanding revenue for its 2009 third-quarter sales.  The number two security software maker, however, failed to do just that.  The revenue was expected by Wall Street to reach $486 million but McAfee was only able to deliver $485.3 million.  For some, the million dollar difference may not look that bad, but for a security software company such as McAfee, the drop can be devastating.  This is because McAfee has always been expected to perform better than expectations.

McAfee shares' troubles

A McAfee share was worth 31 cents about a year ago.  The challenges the security software maker was experiencing became obvious when the share dropped several cents to 23.  This caused McAfee's net income to drop by 25 percent.  This means that the net income was dragged down from $48.8 million to $36.8 million.  This amount, $12 million, is a steep drop in terms of software sales; it is a rough tumble for any product for that matter.

Trading drama

Extended trading had seen McAfee not just falter but fall by $1.95 to $41.80 at the New York Stock Exchange.  This is despite the fact that Todd Weller, who is connected with Stifel Nicolaus & Co., advised investors to buy shares from McAfee.  Weller himself does not have any McAfee share; that spelled trouble for both him and McAfee.

McAfee's tactics

McAfee had always excelled because of its association with some top computer dealers.  Its Chief Executive Officer, Dave DeWalt made it possible by paying establishments such as Internet-service providers and computer distributors to use MAfee trial versions.  Of course, when presented with a trial version of the particular software, consumers will gravitate towards that software.  McAfee even had a two-year agreement with Dell.  Dell, the number two PC maker, will recommend McAfee to its customers.  The relationship managed to boost McAfee sales by 13 percent.  This was one of the reasons for Wall Street's enthusiastic forecast.

Powerful competition

If McAfee's management had been doing everything right, the security software brand's competitor must be a great threat.  It seems that McAfee had failed to convince Symantec's consumers to change software brand.  While MAfee experienced a fall, Symantec produced better than expected results.  DeWalt confirmed that MAfee was not able to take away enough clients from toughest competitor, Symantec.  MAfee still displayed market share that were not too far from its previous year's results.  The worse thing, however, that the results can imply is that not only did McAfee fail to convince some of Symantec's customers to change software, some of its own customers must have shifted to Symantec.

Some analysts may start giving McAfee less than positive predictions as a result of the fall of its sales.  However, McAfee must still aim to exceed its earlier, more positive forecasts to consider itself back on track.

Days ago, some users have been affected by outages in several of Google's services.  According to McAfee, the problem was caused by an upgrade inside Google.  Google claimed, however, that it was Asia's fault.  But the real reason why the system failed has not been disclosed.

The impact of the Google outage

The widespread outages include several of Google's services such as Google Docs, Search, and Gmail.  According to McAfee's data, the outage started at 8:13 a.m. (Pacific Daylight Time) and ended at 9:14 a.m. (Pacific Daylight Time).  Not everyone was affected by the outages.  According to Google, only 14% of the total users was affected by what happened.  Although this may not be much if one compared it to the overall users, 14% is still millions of people.  And it also means substantial money was lost by just an hour of network disruption.  Among those who have been directly affected were those using larger providers such as AT&T or Verizon.  This was so because these large ISPs interconnect their networks with Google's to reduce bandwith cost and improve speed.  The smaller ISP that didn't interconnect their network were not affected at all.  But there are sources claiming that the effect of the outage was not limited to Google services and sites.  It was said that there were quite number of sites that performed poorly during the outage.  

The cause of the Google outage

The vice president of McAfee's threat research, Dmitri Alperovitch, said that the system disruption was caused by Google's attempt to alter the autonomous system numbers.  This is actually part of the transition that Google undergoes from using an old standard of networking to a new one, which is called IPv6.  Further, Alperovitch said that an unknown bug in Google's network caused the hardware failure.  According to McAfee, this information was obtained from a private mail list of networking professionals, in which Google is a member.  

Google stated that the error was actually caused by their routing of the Web traffic through Asia, which resulted in traffic jam.  However, Google did not disclose the reason why it has to direct its web traffic to Asia.  It denies McAfee's claim that the system failure has anything to do with Google's transition to IPv6 though.  Google asserts that it is only 14% of its users who were affected.  On its Google Blog, the company says that it has been working hard to provide faster and better services, "so it's especially embarrassing when a glitch like this one happens."

McAfee recently announced this May that they have acquired whitelisting software company Solidcore for $33 million.  There is an additional $14 million in the deal should Solidcore achieve set performance goals.

For the past years, McAfee has been aggressively building up its security software portfolio through the acquisition of different software security firms.  To be exact, McAfee has in its list of past acquisitions Citadel Security, Preventsys, and Foundstone.  And now the company adds Solidcore to the list.

What this acquisition does to McAfee's products and services

Through this acquisition, McAfee further widened it security offerings to customers by including the whitelisting technology of Solidcore.  Whitelisting works by filtering unsigned sites and web application as a way to combat worms, viruses and other forms of malware.  With this approach, any software that is not within the whitelist will not be allowed to run in the system.  This adds more security as sites and applications are already pre-scanned before being allowed access.  Now, there is an added level of protection from the server level as only allowed sites are given access to a system.  And to manage issues about blocking access to legitimate software, Solidcore also has a host of tools and applications to manage the security levels and exemptions to the filtering.  McAfee considers this addition of this pre-approved software security protection as a great complement to McAfee’s current suite of security software products and applications.

Solidcore’s reach, aside from providing web security, also involves information security services for ATM, cash registers, and other retail market systems.  As proof of the reliability of the company, Solidcore’s technology is used in more than 100 financial institutions and 15,000 retail stores, according to McAfee estimates.

McAfee is getting Solidcore at its prime; doubling its profits from 2008 and posting solid earnings for the first quarter of 2009.  As the need for security in data and security system is always present, the future looks bright for the acquisition, both for McAfee and Solidcore.

And with the acquisition of Solidcore’s existing market, McAfee has also spread its influence on cash registers, ATMs and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems.  Aside from solidifying its own software suite, the acquisition also opened up other markets for McAfee’s services.

The buyout will reach its completion in the second quarter of 2009.  McAfee also expects to have lowered share values because of the acquisition, but expects things to pick up once the integration is complete and all the new service preparations are finished.