McAfee VirusScan 8.0i Adds Intrusion Prevention Capabilities Beta Out Now; Final Release Expected in Q3 Sean Michael Kerner
The latest version of McAfee VirusScan Enterprise 8.0i, released last week by corporate parent Network Associates, now includes intrusion prevention.
The new version makes full use of the McAfee Protection-in-Depth strategy, which aims to shield users from the wide array of security threats that abound on the Internet. Even though the product is called VirusScan, it is no longer limited to anti-virus software, as it was when McAfee launched the product line years ago — in a more innocent time.
2004 has been a record year for virus and intrusion attempts. A study recently released by Deloitte & Touche found that IT security attacks on the world's leading financial institutions have more than doubled in a year.
Beyond anti-virus, VirusScan now also protects against malware/spyware, operating system and application software vulnerabilities, and unauthorized
intrusions/hacker attacks. Version 8.0i adds new advanced host-based intrusion prevention functionality plus technology to protect against buffer overflow exploits that target certain Microsoft software and OS vulnerabilities.
The intrusion prevention security features let administrators create policies for a more granular level of network protection across processes and shared and mapped drives. Support of the Cisco Network Admission Control (NAC) via the Cisco Trust agent is also included.
The new offering can be managed at an enterprise level through McAfee's ePolicy Orchestrator or ProtectionPilot tools in a single console interface that permits deployment, reporting, and policy management.
"The solution provides users with a focused approach to system protection through the introduction of a proactive integrated solution under one management console, eliminating the need for hard to manage point solutions," Raj Dhingra, vice president of corporate and product marketing at Network
Associates, said in a statement.
McAfee VirusScan Enterprise 8.0i is now available in beta release, with the final edition expected to ship in Q3 2004.
