McAfee chief executive wants to secure outer space

Dave DeWalt uses McAfee Focus 2010 to claim security is to become more integrated and connected

McAfee wants to enable organisations to secure every endpoint

McAfee wants to secure every end point on Earth and beyond. This was the bold claim made by McAfee chief executive Dave DeWalt, as he outlined his company’s strategy in his keynote address at the McAfee Focus 2010 conference in Las Vegas yesterday.

“We want to embed security at every level from the silicon to the satellite,” said DeWalt.

He added that he wants to create ways to make it simple, safe and secure to connect all devices to the internet. “We want to create a way to secure every endpoint,” he said. “You’re only as strong as the weakest link connected to your network.”

But DeWalt acknowledged the inherent difficulties, with the explosion of endpoints over the last few years. “IT consumerisation is one of the biggest challenges we could all face. How do we securely manage all these devices?” he asked.

DeWalt outlined the major pillars of his strategy, with the cloud and connectivity a constant theme.

“We’ve expanded from the endpoint to the cloud,” he said. “The key is connectedness, talking constantly in real time back to the cloud. Every time we see an anomaly at the gateway, it’s communicated with the cloud.”

He explained that this communication enabled them to correlate threats and responses in network devices within the cloud.

Although cagey on the specifics of the McAfee/Intelintegration, DeWalt was keen to emphasise the benefits of introducing security into a lower layer of system architecture, the silicon itself. He termed this "down-stack protection".

“No one is utilising the defence features in the silicon,” DeWalt explained. “Many features can be enabled at this level in the architecture. We have to think about leveraging technologies at a lower layer in the stack.”