Intel Security To Retire McAfee SaaS Email Services

Intel Security has announced it is pulling its support for a number of McAfee email security products as it looks to move customers onto newer products.

The company announced this week that the ‘end of life’ for the McAfee SaaS Email Protection and Archiving products will affect three offerings: Email Archiving; Email Encryption; and Email Protection & Continuity.

Intel will stop selling the products as of January 11 2016, but the products will continue to operate until 11 January 2019, after which they will no longer be supported. The products will cease operating altogether on 11 January 2021.

End Of Life

So why has Intel decided to kill these products? The company provided no clear answers to that question, but provided the following explanation in a FAQ on the matter.

“We are working to create an integrated system that delivers faster protection, detection and correction,” said Intel. “To create that security system, we are investing in solutions for the endpoint, cloud, threat detection, and management that will ensure the security of the endpoint and cloud and all data  traversing in between.”

“Increasing our investments in these critical areas required exiting other product areas such as McAfee email security solutions,” said the company. “We apologise for any disruption this action causes you, and are committed to delivering continued support for McAfee email security solutions through the end of life process.”

Customer can reportedly instead use McAfee Endpoint Security and/or the McAfee ePO Cloud as replacement services.

McAfee Retirement

Intel has made no secret of its desire to rid itself of the McAfee brand. There has been speculation the maverick behaviour of the antivirus company’s founder John McAfee could have played a part in driving this change.

McAfee has not been shy from hiding from the limelight, however, as he recently revealed that he may join the US presidential election in a bid to run for president. The 69-year-old former security expert, who spent most of the last few years on the run from Belizean police, said that he wants to run for office in 2016 as part of the new ‘Cyber Party’ which could offer protection from government ‘cyber-warfare’.

Analysts questioned Intel’s $7.58 billion (£4.9bn) acquisition of McAfee when it was first mooted back in 2010. They questioned the need to integrate for security on a chip, where it can only deal with a limited range of attacks, namely those involving rootkits.

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