McAfee Unveils Next Generation Firewall Technology

PRESS RELEASE

SANTA CLARA, Calif., " April 27, 2010 " McAfee Inc. (NYSE: MFE) today announced the release of its next generation firewall, McAfee' Firewall Enterprise version 8. With this new release, McAfee has expanded existing application protection delivered by its enterprise firewall appliance product line, giving security administrators visibility, recognition and policy enforcement of over thousands of applications that are invisible to conventional firewall technology. By integrating with McAfee's real-time, cloud-based global threat intelligence, McAfee Firewall Enterprise and McAfee Firewall Enterprise Profiler provide increased visibility into external and internal threats and vulnerabilities, protecting customers more efficiently and reducing both compliance and operational costs. With 350 threat researchers and one hundred million data collection sensors in operation, McAfee's global footprint is unmatched in the network security market. The products leverage McAfee's large install base and unique threat intelligence capabilities, providing customers with the most insightful and comprehensive view of the evolving threat landscape available. Application intelligence from McAfee Labs will provide comprehensive threat protection for existing as well as newly developed network applications.

Today's Web 2.0 applications expose organizations to new threats and to policy and compliance issues related to application detection and control. Based on high-performance application security, McAfee Firewall Enterprise appliances combine application identification and user awareness to provide market-leading network enforcement that map easily to corporate security policies. The pioneering user-based activity monitoring and visualization technology provides a level of clarity not possible with other network security products.

"Mobile users, modern web-based applications and ever more sophisticated cyber criminals have combined with the economic environment to create the perfect storm. By expanding application protection capabilities, backed by the researchers at McAfee Labs, McAfee provides a new value proposition to customers," said Charles Kolodgy, research vice president, IDC Security Products. "McAfee Firewall Enterprise provides comprehensive application threat and malware blocking, as well as industry-leading URL filtering and reputation-based blocking capabilities. With this new release, McAfee is expanding the level of application protection customers can receive from their firewall."

Traditional firewall technologies have proved to be expensive to manage, and in reality, don't effectively enforce business policies. In recent years, organizations have faced the burden of dramatically increasing firewall management costs, as legacy firewall technology has struggled to keep up with the volume of today's threats and the changing application environments. McAfee Firewall Enterprise features streamlined management through integration with McAfee' ePolicy Orchestrator'. This integration of management capability allows organizations to enjoy lower operating expenses.

"The release of our next generation firewall is intended to disrupt a stagnant firewall market that has failed to keep pace with the threat landscape. Last generation firewalls don't effectively enforce relevant business policies and are simply too hard and expensive to manage," said Dan Ryan, executive vice president and general manager of the Network Security business unit at McAfee. With this release, we're delivering next generation firewall capabilities that improve network security while lowering compliance and operational costs."

Next Generation Firewall Enhancements

Next generation capabilities include significant advancements in firewall management, application discovery and protection, and integrated layers of threat protection. McAfee Firewall Enterprise is the first and only firewall to use a global reputation-based technology, including reputation-based blocking and geo-location to filter unwanted traffic before it hits the network—stopping attacks before they happen. The McAfee Firewall Enterprise gives security administrators visibility, recognition and policy enforcement of thousands of applications, providing them with additional control.

McAfee Firewall Profiler pinpoints in real-time how firewall rules and rule changes impact application availability, usage and security. Profiler turns hours and days of rule creation deployment and troubleshooting work into a matter of clicks by providing administrators visibility into the business impact of rule changes. By providing an intuitive visual context based on users and applications, Profiler reduces the impact of creating or changing specific rules and helps firewall administrators implement new policies and respond rapidly to business needs.

McAfee Firewall Enterprise is available in traditional appliance form factors, in a new virtualized hardware appliance and as a software-based firewall virtual appliance. These delivery options allow customers to take advantage of virtualization technologies to lower cost and increase flexibility when consolidating datacenter and application environments and when bringing up new virtual environments. The McAfee Firewall Enterprise Virtual Appliance lets customers rapidly deploy protection into their own virtual environments on their own hardware.

"Trying to maintain regulatory and corporate compliance in an environment where web-enabled applications are crisscrossing internal and external boundaries has become a struggle for us," said Paul Popour, Senior Network Engineer with CSC at Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation. "With the additional application controls and user identity features available in V8 our Security Operation Center should be able to bring some clarity and control back to the network perimeter."

Next Generation Features and Benefits

* Expanded Application Protection-McAfee Firewall Enterpriseenables administrators to take granular control of applications based on business needs and regulatory compliance. Additionally, it allows administrators to quickly apply application policies that are mapped to user identity that grant explicit use of an application. * Advanced threat protection -McAfee Firewall Enterprise leverages McAfee's global threat intelligence to deliver the world's most advanced threat protection. McAfee TrustedSource reputation-based geo-location and reputation filtering allow organizations to limit their network connections to those with good reputations, coming from relevant locations.McAfee Antivirus protection, also running on the firewall, leverages the global threat collection and analysis done by McAfee to deliver the most up-to-date protection against known bad code. * Advancements in Firewall Management - McAfee Firewall Profiler addresses the most serious challenge facing most firewall administrators, the need for business context around rules, by pinpointing how firewall rules are impacting the business application availability and security. Profiler delivers application and user context to firewall rules, instantly analyzing firewall and flow data from across the network and allowing administrators to automatically understand the business impact of rule, application and network changes.

McAfee Firewall Enterprise protects more than 16,000 customers worldwide including thousands of government agencies, Fortune 500 organizations, and seven of the top ten financial institutions.

Availability

McAfee Firewall Enterprise appliances are available this quarter, starting at $1,500 USD (MSRP). Exact pricing depends on customer requirements, selected model and associated add-on modules. The McAfee Firewall Profiler appliance starts at $9,750 USD (MSRP) and Firewall Enterprise Control Center starts at $2,400 USD (MSRP).

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About McAfee, Inc.

McAfee, Inc., headquartered in Santa Clara, California, is the world's largest dedicated security technology company. McAfee is committed to relentlessly tackling the world's toughest security challenges. The company delivers proactive and proven solutions and services that help secure systems and networks around the world, allowing users to safely connect to the Internet, browse and shop the web more securely. Backed by an award-winning research team, McAfee creates innovative products that empower home users, businesses, the public sector and service providers by enabling them to prove compliance with regulations, protect data, prevent disruptions, identify vulnerabilities, and continuously monitor and improve their security. http://www.mcafee.com