Global Intelligence Is Driving Holistic Security

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Mobile security

According to Schenk, the boom in mobile devices is creating more work – and opening up new markets – for security vendors.

“The mobile phone of today is probably as powerful – or more powerful – than a PC five years ago,” said Schenk. “For a lot of people it’s obvious that they’ve got good security on their PCs and notebooks, but a lot of people don’t realise or don’t even think about the need for a mobile device to be secured.”

He pointed out that the consumerisation of IT within organisations means that there are now not only multiple devices, but multiple identities coming onto the network. “As an enterprise, you’ve got to be able to allow your users to use their platform of choice and operating system of choice. It’s really about the blurring parameters between people’s private identity and world online, versus the business content and the business person you are online,” he said.

“The cloud is where we are living more and more. All of us have a life in the cloud – whether on Facebook or LinkedIn. We’ve got different business applications and private applications. How are you going to control that as a company, and how restrictive are you going to be?” added Schenk.

For McAfee, it’s a matter of enabling rather than enforcing. “Mobility to me and the company means flexibility. I can’t put you in a world where you can’t use your LinkedIn or Facebook. I don’t think you can do your job any more without Twitter or having access to the web. So we need to provide an unrestricted safe platform for consumers and businesses to use.”

The solution, said Schenk, is to take a holistic view of security. “The endpoints need to talk to the network; the network needs to talk to the endpoints. And the network needs to talk to the cloud, so the cloud can give its intelligence to the networks,” he said. “Security is not just the endpoint. It’s the network, it’s the cloud. This whole sense of ‘safe never sleeps’. That is our focus.”

Joining the security conversation

Meanwhile, in the middle of it all, McAfee’s GTI database continuously gathers information, analyses it, correlates it and then streams the information back to the endpoints.

“The key thing is to continue to invite as many consumers and enterprises to use it, because the more people that use it, the more relevant the data, and the more reliable the patterns of analysis are becoming,” he said.

While McAfee’s focus, particularly within Europe, is on mobile security, Schenck explained that this is closely linked the the cloud.

“Smartphones couldn’t operate without the cloud,” he said. “Cloud is inevitable. It’s the way the world is going.”

However, he added, encryption is very important. “If you send data to the cloud you better store it and send it encrypted. Which is possible, you just have to implement it,” he said. “So we need to change the way of thinking. If the cloud is inevitable, what can you do to make sure you can take the business benefit of it, but still being able to sleep at night?”

Schenk said that a lot of young people don’t really care where their data resides. “Some of the most intimate pictures or stories are on their Facebook. It resides somewhere but nobody knows where. You assume it’s safe because it’s protected.”

He comes back to the point that security must enable this kind of behaviour to take place safely, rather than restrict it.

“You need to understand what is driving businesses; what is the value that a security company can bring to a business? Because it’s from protecting to enabling. It’s providing a safe environment for businesses to differentiate their network and their way of communication from their competitors.”