McAfee launches enterprise cloud security

McAfee today made its first move into the enterprise cloud space with a new offering that addresses security across all aspects of cloud-based traffic, regardless of where enterprise users are or the type of device they are using to access the network.

The platform is the company’s first complete platform aimed at helping enterprises directly cloud security and leverage cloud opportunities, and is a result of the combine capabilities of McAfee and Intel, which recently completed a merger, said Marc Oleson, senior vice president and general manager of content and cloud security for McAfee.

“It’s a first in terms of the level of protection we’re providing,” Oleson said. “It doesn’t matter where people are or the devices they’re using.”

McAfee’s Cloud Security Platform secures all content and data traffic—including email, web and identity traffic—moving between an enterprise organization and the cloud, Oleson said. “The combination of identity, web and email security—being able to leverage a person’s identity and where they’re coming from—is what sets our system apart,” he said.

The system also address social media access via policy, meaning that enterprises can specify exactly how certain social media networks can be used.

“It’s really granular-level policy control—the ability to say you can use YouTube, for example, but only for a certain set of instructional videos,” Oleson said.

Another capability of the platform is making sure organizations identify data that should or should not be moved to the cloud. Using the platform’s Data Loss Prevention solution, organizations can first understand where its data resides, classify that data in terms of importance or sensitivity, build policies to protect that data and then enforce those policies while data travels within or outside the organization to the cloud.

That need is not so much about not trusting the cloud, but rather about not putting something in the cloud that doesn’t necessarily need to be there or shouldn’t be due to sensitivity, Oleson said.

“For any enterprise, there is data that shouldn’t be on the cloud,” he said. “We want to understand, classify and tag business-sensitive data by providing a specific set of rules.”