9/10/2010 9:26:14 AM
IT Security news: Intel's move to dominate 'everything'
Following Intel's $7.68bn acquisition of McAfee, everyone has
been wondering what the company's strategy is. Could this be
Intel's move to dominate tablets, mobile, cloud and security - in
other words, pretty much everything bleeding edge? What are Intel's
options?
Build more security into chips. By doing this
Intel increases its reach as security threats move from PCs onto
devices including mobile phones, tablets and other electronic
devices. On the face of this strategy, Intel has opened up a top
dollar future revenue stream. If the firm can bring McAfee's
functionality down to 'silicon level' then the opportunities are
mind-boggling.
A Virtualised World. We are moving to an
increasingly virtualised world and the key question now is: how to
build security into the whole virtual platform stack? If you can do
this, you don't need to be concerned about different types of
security because the platform will look after everything for
you.
Mobile devices, tablets and clouds. Embedding
security and the mobile market could be joined up very effectively
- if mobile security can be embedded without impacting on device
performance...well, it's a smart move. At present software is
loaded onto a device but there will be increased demand for
software intelligence embedded at hardware level. Let us not forget
that McAfee has a SaaS business so will we see new integrated
products released soon?
Intel - A software sales business? On the face of it the
market-incumbent chip manufacturer has little or no synergy with
McAfee's SME software sales business and its associated channel
model. Essentially we have a huge and dominant engineering company
joining up with a sales driven US west coast machine. Perhaps it
will be McAfee lending advice to Intel on this score.
It is certainly one of the more fascinating acquisitions of
late, but I am certain that despite Intel's premium price
acquisition of McAfee this is a smart and long term strategic move
as mobile, automobile devices and consumer electronic devices
currently face little security threats, but will increasingly do so
in the near future.
Author - Damian Hicklin
IT Security Manager
ARM