McAfee to grow by 40%

How important is India in McAfee’s overall scheme of things?
We have been operating in India for over 12
years and have a strong foothold in the region.
Our Bengaluru development center which was
started in 2000 is a key location from McAfeeÂ’s
global R&D standpoint. We work with over
1,400 channel partners in India and have a
strong customer base ranging across consumer
segment, enterprise segment and support
requirements of companies.

How is the need for anti-virus solution in Indian enterprises emerging?
Anti-virus is a well understood and accepted
concept in India. However this is only half the
battle won as most users do not understand that
anti-virus is no longer good enough to protect
or block them from the latest malware attacks.
Today, there is a paradigm shift in endpoint
security which has transcended beyond antivirus
on account of the new-age hybrid and
sophisticated threats that slip through the
cracks of traditional anti-virus software.

Over the last decade, the increased usage
of Internet has led to a spurt in cybercrimes,
which have turned from an act of personal
challenge and notoriety, to a targeted and
lucrative enterprise. On the other hand, consumerization
of IT has enabled employees to
bring their own technology to workplace.
The nature of business requires employees to
be connected 24x7; underlining the need for
heightened security. These have been the key
growth drivers for the security industry.

As a natural corollary, the industry is
steadily witnessing a shift in enterprise security
adoption from a traditional anti-virus
approach to an integrated security solutions
approach comprising elements of anti-spyware,
anti-malware, firewall, host-based intrusion
prevention anti-malware, spyware, encryption
and data loss prevention. The need of the hour
is integrated and holistic security solutions
that can manage the complexity of todayÂ’s
hybrid and sophisticated threats landscape
with convenience and ease.

What are your views on the security business in India?
According to IDC report, the total enterprise
security market in India is forecasted to be
$255 mn in 2011. The security industry is
fragmented with various players specializing
across services and security solutions such as
endpoint security, firewall, web security etc.
According to IDC, McAfee is the fastest growing
security vendor in India.

What is the current awareness level for security products? What is the demand that you have witnessed for security solutions?
Majority of organizations across sectors such as
government, telecom, ITeS and BFSI are looking
at revamping their security posture. Apart from
major deployments in the network security
segment, we are witnessing a demand uptick
for data loss prevention, risk and compliance,
firewall and web security technologies across
leading Indian enterprises.

What are the challenges you face in the current scenario from both the enterprise and consumer standpoint?
We are increasingly witnessing more and more
sophistication in the threat landscape with
the emergence of attacks such as Stuxnet and
Night Dragon. Secondly there is an explosion
of new technologies such as mobile devices
and Web 2.0 that makes us more productive
but also more vulnerable to cyber threats. Add
to this, there are a limited number of trained
resources to manage threats across enterprises.
Although we see an improved security posture
at enterprise level, we believe that there is a
lot more maturity required to use security as
a business enabler. The need of the hour is to
have co-related interlocked defense in depth,
which helps organizations to be proactively
secure and also be compliant. This will drive
efficiency and control in cost, as enterprises
move towards an optimized state.

From a consumer standpoint, awareness
about Internet security is the biggest challenge.
Security is as much a peopleÂ’s issue as it is a
technology issue. Consumers are unaware
that it is also their responsibility to protect
their data. Consumers usually assume that the
service pro vider or the PC vendor would take
care of these aspects of data security which is
not the case.

Being an industry leader, McAfee has undertaken
many initiatives to create awareness
amongst all our customer segments and will
continue doing so.

What are the latest technology upgrades from McAfee stable you would like to focus on?
During April-June 2011, we have launched the following solutions:

Enterprise products: (including Enterprise Mobility Management)
􀁺 In April 2011, we launched the latest release
of McAfee Network Security Platform that
includes enhanced botnet control through
reputation intelligence, virtual network inspection
and a traffic analysis port for network monitoring,
forensics and other advanced analysis
engines. Our network security solution extends
interoperability with third-party products and
supports virtual data center environments.
􀁺 In May 2011, McAfee announced the Cloud
Security Platform. This new platform secures
all content and data traffic–including email,
web and identity traffic–moving between an
organization and the Cloud. The platform
delivers security through highly integrated,
modular solutions that protect both inbound
and outbound traffic moving between the
enterprise and the public cloud.
􀁺 In June 2011, we also launched the McAfee
Security Management solution, providing automated
and real-time security and risk analysis
to proactively identify, assess, manage and
report on enterprise security. This solution
delivers complete integration between the
McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator (McAfee ePO)
platform, McAfee Risk Advisor, and McAfee endpoint
products to enable organizations to gain
complete visibility of security and risk events
across any on-premise or hosted desktop,
network, or server.

Consumer products:
􀁺 In June 2011, we announced an extension of
our mobile device portfolio for consumers with
McAfee Mobile Security. The software, available
for both smartphones and tablets, combines
three leading McAfee mobile security products:
WaveSecure, VirusScan Mobile and SiteAdvisor
for Android.
􀁺 In June 2011, McAfee announced the launch
of McAfee Family Protection, a parental control
program that protects children of all ages from
online risks while allowing them the freedom
to safely explore the Internet.

What makes McAfee unique compared to other brands? Can you share examples of your differentiators?
The entire range of our offerings—both ente rprise
and consumer products—take advan tage
of McAfeeÂ’s unique Global Threat Intelligence to
provide an unprecedented level of protection.
This includes security knowhow from McAfeeÂ’s
researchers, threat honey pots and the installed
base of McAfee products to make computer
security on every computer protected by
McAfee smarter and safer, at no additional cost.
With this technology, there is no other security
provider today who can match the power of
the collective threat intelligence resources we
tap into.

McAfee is also the only vendor which
plays across all threat vectors like intrusion
prevention, firewall, risk and compliance, content
security and endpoint security. Unlike
our competitors who are focusing either
on perimeter security or end point security,
we cover the complete gamut of security
technology and that brings a huge benefit to
our customers. McAfee has the largest base of
deployments across the globe which gives us
big advantage over our competitors.

Apart from having a strong R&D team
and products across all vectors, one of our
key differentiators is our proprietary McAfee
ePolicy Orchestrator (ePO). Since, McAfeeÂ’s
ePO unifies management of endpoints, networks,
data and compliance solutions and
centralizes control, gives CIOs a single view
of all the security solutions deployed in an
organization.

How was McAfee India’s performance in the last fiscal and what are your expectations this year? What are your future plans from a channel perspective?
McAfee has been growing above the industry
growth rates for the last 3 years and will
continue the trend in 2011. We have made
key investments in verticals—government,
banking, financial services and telecom in our
enterprise business.

We expect to capture significant market
share in technologies like web security, enter -
prise mobility management and next generation
FWs and consolidate our position in
technologies like intrusion prevention, endpoint
security and vulnerability manage ment.
We expect to be growing at least 40% y-o-y in
2011.

McAfee has 3 focused sales segments for
India, namely enterprise, commercial and
SMB.

We have enhanced our partner program
and have ensured consistency in our partner
policies. There are 3 levels to McAfeeÂ’s partner
program:
􀁺 Elite: Elite partners handle enterprise accounts.
We have 5 elite partners.
􀁺 Premier: Premier partners predominantly
focus on commercial and enterprise accounts.
We have 25 premier partners.
􀁺 SMB: SMB partners focus purely on this
segment and account for the rest of our partner
base

On the consumerÂ’s side, our go-to-market
strategy is focused on retail. From a partnerÂ’s
standpoint, we have 9 sub-distributors spread
across key cities such as New Delhi, Mumbai,
Chennai, Kolkata, Jaipur, Gurgaon, Pune and
Ahmedabad.

Currently, we have almost 1,400 resellers
in India that support both enterprise and
consumer sales.