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If you were on the internet in a certain era, you remember McAfee. It was the defensive line between you and the rest of the internet, reminding you with incessant popups that you were not hacked, not quite yet, but only if you renewed your subscription right away. Then Intel bought the firewall company in 2010 for an eye-popping $7.68 billion<\/a>\u00a0and billed it as Intel Security, and the name McAfee became more closely associated with the company\u2019s founder, a man who retired to Belize only to be accused of his neighbor\u2019s murder<\/a>. (Johnny Depp will reportedly play John McAfee<\/a> in an upcoming film.)<\/p>\n But things didn\u2019t work out with Intel (or Belize, for that matter) and so the unit formerly known as Intel Security will be McAfee once again. Today, Intel is officially inking a deal that will spin McAfee out, with the asset management firm TPG taking a 51 percent stake in the company at a $4.2 billion valuation. Intel will retain a 49 percent stake.<\/p>\n What \u201cMcAfee\u201d means now rests largely in the hands of TPG and McAfee\u2019s newly-minted CEO, Chris Young, who led Intel Security over the past two years. TPG partner\u00a0Bryan Taylor will serve as the chairman of McAfee\u2019s board, and Young will have a chance to prove himself out from under the umbrella of Intel.<\/p>\n The spinout is designed to give McAfee more independence to pursue \u201cpure-play\u201d cybersecurity, untethered from Intel\u2019s chip-making ambitions. Laugh if you will at the McAfee branding (hey, at least it\u2019s not Oath<\/a>) but the company\u2019s off to a pretty good start \u2014 it secures two-thirds of the world\u2019s 2,000 largest companies and grew its revenue 11 percent in the first half of 2016. That is not a bad place from which to launch a company!<\/p>\n It seems that\u00a0Intel and McAfee are going through a very mutual breakup. Both parties wish each other the best (Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said in a statement, \u201cWe offer Chris Young and the McAfee team our full support as they establish themselves as one of the largest pure-play cybersecurity companies in the industry\u201d) and setting a cybersecurity company like McAfee free from Intel\u2019s hardware ambitions seems mutually beneficial.<\/p>\n \u201cWith so many different elements of the threat landscape, a cybersecurity company needs to develop technology from a different place than a semiconductor company,\u201d McAfee chief technology officer Steve Grobman told TechCrunch. \u201cIf you think a lot about the technology we would have defended organizations with six years ago \u2014 perimeter defenses, signature-based AV [anti-virus] \u2014 we had a rate and pace of new threats that was largely manageable, whereas in 2017, the threat landscape is changing very, very quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n While Intel and McAfee turned out not to be the ideal match, Grobman pointed out that Intel will still benefit from the monetary successes of McAfee. He also noted that McAfee\/Intel Security took a positive turn under Young\u2019s leadership. \u201cThe division took a positive course correction over two years ago when Chris came in to run the group,\u201d he explained. Young, he said, brought in a change in strategy: \u201cThe change in strategy from a broad product strategy, having a product in every category, was not as good a strategy as a targeted strategy where we focus on the areas where we can be world-class.\u201d<\/p>\n McAfee will stay focused on threat detection, but it\u2019s moving beyond the signature-based approaches of its early days and is adopting machine learning technology instead in an effort to detect attacks as they happen, rather than after the fact. Machine learning will also be a part of McAfee\u2019s play in attack reconstruction, aimed at letting defenders know how their networks were breached.<\/p>\n The company is also reaching out to other defenders. In November, it open-sourced a messaging interface to allow different security products to communicate with each other \u2014 an effort to break down the silos between different enterprise cybersecurity products. \u201cWe have two choices: have technology work as islands or have technology work together,\u201d Grobman said. \u201cThe ability to have good results with things working together is significantly more effective.\u201d<\/p>\n McAfee has pursued a few other partnerships: It\u2019s a founding partner in NoMoreRansom.org<\/a>, a site that attempts to unite ransomware victims with keys to decrypt their data, and in the Cyber Threat Alliance<\/a>, an organization that shares threat intelligence data among cybersecurity firms.<\/p>\n Now that McAfee has more room to maneuver, is it possible that the company will snatch up some of the cybersecurity startups rumored to be up for acquisition? Grobman tells us that he \u201ccan\u2019t name any specifics on companies that are under consideration,\u201d which sorta implies that there are companies under consideration. We\u2019ll have to wait and see.<\/p>\n And about that McAfee branding? Grobman said we\u2019re the only people still worrying about what John McAfee is up to. Going back to the original name is \u201ca business decision based on the brand position of McAfee as a trusted security brand,\u201d he said, adding, \u201cIt\u2019s important that people recognize John hasn\u2019t had anything to do with the company in over two decades. Although he has interesting aspects of his personal life, people don\u2019t think about the person. They recognize the value that the brand brings.\u201d<\/p>\n Featured Image: Bryce Durbin\/Bryce Durbin<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"\"](\"https:\/\/tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com\/2016\/09\/mcafee-iot.png?w=680\")
If you were on the internet in a certain era, you remember McAfee. It was the defensive line between you and the rest of the internet, reminding you with incessant popups that you were not hacked, not quite yet, but only if you renewed your subscription right away. Then Intel bought the firewall company in 2010 for an eye-popping $7.68 billion\u00a0and billed it as Intel Security, and the name… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/img><\/a>
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