McAfee unafraid of Microsoft's security effort

Antivirus firm McAfee's president believes the company will be able to compete with Microsoft after the software giant launches its OneCare Live security products - because security is not something you can do "part-time".

In June, Microsoft is expected to launch Windows OneCare Live, which is the company's long-anticipated entry into the consumer antivirus space. The company plans to charge US$49.95 a year to shield up to three PCs against viruses, spyware and other cyber threats.

However, although Microsoft's late entry into the security application market does pose a threat to McAfee's business, the company's president Kevin Weiss told silicon.com sister publication ZDNet Australia last week that security requires dedication and specialisation.

"Security is hard - we have been doing this for 15 years. We have over 10 patents that are focussed right at security. We think we have a pretty significant lead in what we are doing. Security is not something you do part-time," said Weiss.

Weiss gives one example of how he believes Microsoft's thinking is fundamentally flawed when it comes to security: "If you are in an airport lounge and they have PC that lets people do their email remotely, look at how many Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents get downloaded… Microsoft doesn't allow you to look at those documents without downloading them to the PC. That is for me, an indication that they don't think about security all the time," said Weiss.

Microsoft said it is going to let its customers decide who they want to trust with their security applications.

Peter Watson, Microsoft Australia's chief security advisor said last week that although the company is hoping to woo both consumers and enterprise customers, it still sees vendors such as McAfee, Symantec and Sophos as partners.

"We look at the antivirus vendors out there and see them as partners. In XP we have the security centre which allows users to choose whether they want to use our security components or if they want to install products from a third party vendor - they are allowed to do that," said Watson.

One of Weiss's biggest criticisms of Microsoft's security offering was the lack of integration, which is unsurprising seeing as McAfee only last week announced a revamp of its security applications with better integration and improved management features.

"The interesting thing though is that [Microsoft's] solution is really addressing yesterday's problem - not necessarily today's or tomorrows'. There is no integrated anti-spyware. It is a standalone solution. There is no anti-phishing there is no anti-spam," said Weiss.

In response, Watson denied that Microsoft's security products are not integrated: "All Microsoft security products are actually integrated - but we have allowed structures so if these people want to choose products from another party they can turn our components off and install a third party product."

Watson also argued that Microsoft looks at protecting a whole eco-system that includes everything from the operating system to applications to users in different environments.

"We take a broader view of security - not just looking the value of our security solutions and individual components but also in terms of how is that going to enable the whole ecosystem.

"If you look at the investment Microsoft is making into security then we invest a large part of our research dollars - about a third. From a Microsoft standpoint we see security as a key component to our business," said Watson.