According to McAfee, the 18-month subscription to McAfee Total Protection Service provides an integrated business solution that reduces infrastructure costs and automates security. It contains anti-virus, anti-spyware, firewall and basic email virus protection service, centrally managed by McAfee experts even for PCs not connected to Internet. The updates to those services are handled automatically and remotely 24x7. Additionally, McAfee's Web-based reporting and configuration console is available to HP PC customers 24x7, enabling access to user management at all times.

This service is available from HP Preferred Partners in the form of a physical card. The card, including an activation code, will enable the end user to activate McAfee Total Protection Service, which is preloaded on select HP commercial desktop and notebook PCs in EMEA.

McAfee Total Protection Service is available from Preferred Partners with HP commercial desktop PCs or HP standard and business series notebook PCs at an estimated street price of EUR46. The service is available in six languages: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish and Dutch.

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Cybercriminals are taking advantage of a 300 percent jump in the creation of file-sharing sites that occurred while a famous torrent site - or a site which can host links to copyrighted content - The Pirate Bay, was prosecuted in Sweden. As users develop more sites to share content, malware writers are creating sites to trick users looking to download copyrighted material into downloading malicious programs. McAfee predicts the number of these malicious sites will increase during the fall and holiday blockbuster film seasons.

Many of these sites sprang up to scam users of The Pirate Bay who were looking for a new place to download copyrighted material.

McAfee researchers observed that users began creating their own sites to support The Pirate Bay community when the site was in the process of being shut down. When the site was back up after only 24 hours, the new torrent sites disappeared quickly.

McAfee Labs' analysis revealed peaks in the creation of these sites which correlate to major events in the film industry. During the release of the summer blockbusters McAfee observed a peak, as well as during this year's Oscar Season and 2008's holiday movie season. McAfee expects a similar peak during this year's fall release of "Oscar-bait" films and the holiday season.

Spam, Malware and Web Threats at an All-Time High

The McAfee report also found that spam and malware levels have reached an all-time high, with threats surpassing previous records in the last quarter. Web-based attacks have also increased as cybercriminals take advantage of celebrity deaths and natural disasters.

Spam reached its highest level in history, breaking the previous record set in the second quarter of 2009 by 10 percent. Spam now comprises 92 percent of all e-mail. When compared with the third quarter of 2008, spam jumped 24 percent.

Web-based attacks are the newest hot threat vector, and have become one of the most dangerous tools cybercriminals utilize. These attacks can target anyone who visits a malicious Web page, and are delivered to users through spam, phishing, social networks and even through redirects from hijacked legitimate Web sites. Fifty-five percent of all malicious URLs are hosted in the US, and cybercriminals are getting increasingly effective at utilizing SEO techniques to drive traffic to these bad sites. Malware authors take advantage of news stories like the death of celebrities and natural disasters to hide their malicious intentions.

DDoS for Sale

In the last quarter, McAfee Labs observed many new denial-of-service attacks, including some that demand ransom. Four Australian sports betting companies were taken down during key events like the football and rugby finals, resulting in millions of dollars of losses.

DDoS as a service is growing in popularity, with many cybercriminals offering botnets comprised of thousands of zombie computers to attack sites for the highest bidder. These botnets are capable of knocking even some of the most-protected sites offline. Cybercriminals will even offer a "demo" performance for a few minutes to prospective buyers. The Threats Report includes images of some of these offers.

The McAfee Labs Third Quarter Threats Report can be downloaded here: http://www.mcafee.com/us/local_content/reports/7315rpt_threat_1009.pdf

About McAfee, Inc.

McAfee, Inc., headquartered in Santa Clara, California, is the world's largest dedicated security technology company. McAfee is committed to relentlessly tackling the world's toughest security challenges. The company delivers proactive and proven solutions and services that help secure systems and networks around the world, allowing users to safely connect to the Internet, browse and shop the web more securely. Backed by an award-winning research team, McAfee creates innovative products that empower home users, businesses, the public sector and service providers by enabling them to prove compliance with regulations, protect data, prevent disruptions, identify vulnerabilities, and continuously monitor and improve their security. http://www.mcafee.com

NOTE: McAfee and any additional McAfee marks herein are registered trademarks of McAfee, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and/or other countries. McAfee Red in connection with security is distinctive of McAfee brand products. All other registered and unregistered trademarks herein are the sole property of their respective owners. (C) 2009 McAfee, Inc. All rights reserved.

SOURCE: McAfee, Inc.

McAfee, Inc. 
Ally Zwahlen, 408-346-3466 
Ally_zwahlen@mcafee.com 
or 
The Red Consultancy 
Sean Brooks, 415-618-8807 
Sean.brooks@redconsultancy.com

-- Artemis and TrustedSource(TM) Technology Integration: The first appliance release from McAfee that links to global threat intelligence from its Artemis and TrustedSource technologies, the most precise and comprehensive threat intelligence system in the world

-- Appliance Clustering with Load Balancing: Multiple appliances can clustered to share scanning responsibilities for improved resiliency, scalability and consolidated management and reporting

-- Simplified Installation: Auto-detects network settings and provides an easy to use configuration wizard, helping to simplify installation requirements, reduce installation time and improve the overall user experience

-- New Content Policy Wizards: Simplified creation and set up of content policies through the new configuration wizards and advanced dictionaries simplify policy creation, enable greater enforcement flexibility and reduce false positives and configuration errors

-- Integrated URL Filtering: URL filtering is also included in the 5.5 release at no additional cost. Integrated into the appliance, the URL filtering includes more than 90 Web site categories providing granular Web usage monitoring and policy enforcement. The URL filtering also includes the McAfee Web Reporter package for simplified viewing of Web utilization and trends.

"In addition to their market leading security effectiveness, these appliances also provide customers with email and Web usage policy enforcement capabilities, compliance tools, informative dashboards and comprehensive reporting," said Dave Macey, general manager of the Network Security business unit, McAfee. "McAfee's combined intelligence capabilities add an essential layer of protection to guard against today's most advanced threats and work by accumulating data from millions of sensors, creating a real-time profile of all suspicious activity and content, and then watching for deviations based upon expected behavior."

McAfee Provides the Highest Level of Protection

The McAfee Email and Web Security Appliances offer better than 99 percent spam detection accuracy(1) and are backed by the #1 ranked(2) anti-malware detection technology in the industry. By integrating with McAfee's real-time, cloud-based global threat intelligence, the appliances provide increased visibility into Web and email-based threats, protecting customers more efficiently and reducing both security acquisition and operational costs. With 350 threat researchers and tens of millions of data collection sensors, McAfee's global research is extensive.

"Customers want advanced email and Web security technology that is available as a single solution under a single management console--with the McAfee Email and Web Security Appliances, there is no duct tape required," said James C. Foster, chief executive officer of Ciphent, a McAfee Elite Partner. "McAfee is different from the competition in that it never limits users to a single policy for all users, and all features for both email and Web are inherently included across the board. We proudly work with McAfee and recommend their solution as the one our customers can trust."

"The Email and Web Security Appliance is our primary line of defense and has provided solid protection from viruses on inbound email," said Roger Norfolk, GroupWise administrator and antivirus technology instructor, Mercy Hospital. "Last month it stopped over 3.3 million pieces of spam, 76 infected emails and 32 Potentially Unwanted Programs with a legitimate email count of 175,935. In a year it has blocked over 17 million messages, with very few false positives."

Availability:

The latest version of the McAfee Email and Web Security Appliance are expected to be available globally later this quarter. With the new release, McAfee is offering a 30-day Buyer's Assurance Program for the Email and Web Security Appliances across the United States, Canada and Latin America. With the Buyer's Assurance Program, customers may purchase a McAfee Email and Web Security Appliance and return within thirty days for a refund if they are not completely satisfied with the product. To learn more about the appliances, which are available now available now through McAfee's worldwide partner network, please visit http://www.mcafee.com/ews.

About McAfee, Inc.

McAfee, Inc., headquartered in Santa Clara, California, is the world's largest dedicated security technology company. McAfee is committed to relentlessly tackling the world's toughest security challenges. The company delivers proactive and proven solutions and services that help secure systems and networks around the world, allowing users to safely connect to the Internet, browse and shop the web more securely. Backed by an award-winning research team, McAfee creates innovative products that empower home users, businesses, the public sector and service providers by enabling them to prove compliance with regulations, protect data, prevent disruptions, identify vulnerabilities, and continuously monitor and improve their security. http://www.mcafee.com

McAfee, TrustedSource, and Artemis technology are registered trademarks or trademarks of McAfee, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the US and other countries. McAfee Red in connection with security is distinctive of McAfee brand products. All other registered and unregistered trademarks herein are the sole property of their respective owners. (C) 2009 McAfee, Inc. All rights reserved.

The product plans, specifications and descriptions herein are provided for information only, subject to change without notice, and without warranty of any kind, express or implied.

(1) Virus Bulletin Anti-Spam Comparative Review, published September 2009

(2) AV-Test.org malware detection results published in ComputerBild magazine (Issues 18-22, 17/08/09 - 10/10/09)

Photos/Multimedia Gallery Available: http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/mmg.cgi?eid=6091871&lang=en

SOURCE: McAfee, Inc.

McAfee, Inc. 
Tracy Ross, 408-346-5965 
tracy_ross@mcafee.com 
or 
Red Consultancy 
Ian Bain, 415-618-8806 
ian.bain@redconsultancy.com

This paradox occurs in part because midsize companies are under the mistaken impression that hackers prefer to target larger companies. Almost half of midsize organizations surveyed (43 percent) think larger organizations with 501+ employees are most at risk for a security attack. In truth, organizations with less than 500 employees actually suffer from more attacks on average.

"An organization's level of worry and awareness about increasing threats has not overcome the downward pressure on budgets and resources," said Darrell Rodenbaugh, senior vice president of global midmarket for McAfee. "But this creates a vicious cycle of breach and repair that costs far more than prevention. Our research shows that organizations that put more effort on preventing attacks can end up spending less than a third as much as those that allow themselves to be at risk."

McAfee's study found that 65 percent of midsize organizations surveyed worldwide spend less than four hours a week on IT security proactively, but nearly the same amount (67 percent) spend more than a day recovering from IT security attacks. Threat and response varied greatly from country to country, but uniformly the countries where companies invested the least time on prevention--Canada and France among them--suffered the greatest financial losses and downtime from cybercrime when it happened, requiring a week or longer to recover from their most recent cyberattack.

Additional research findings:

- Last year, midsize organizations in the United States spent a total of $17.2 billion fixing IT security incidents

- On average, in 2008 a single midsize organization in the United States spent more than $75,000 a year on IT security incidents

- There has been a 322 percent increase from 2008 to 2009 of average cyberattacks against midsize organizations in the United States

- 71 percent of IT directors in the midsized companies surveyed believe there is some chance a serious data breach could put their company out of business

- 56 percent of midsize organizations globally have seen more security incidents this year than last, and 29 percent suffered a security breach in the last year

- Of the midsize organizations that have had security breaches, those with 101 to 500 people have had about 24 incidents in the past three years, compared to only 15 incidents for organizations with 501 to 1,000 employees

McAfee's report The Security Paradox was conducted by MSI International and looked at security spending in the last year by companies with 51-1,000 employees in Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. The results were compared to previous studies conducted in Europe and North America.

The full methodology and data is available upon request. To download the The Security Paradox report please visit: www.mcafee.com/securityparadox.

McAfee, Inc., headquartered in Santa Clara, California, is a dedicated security technology company.

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