Nokia and McAfee Team to Tackle the Fastest Growing Segment of the Anti-virus Market
Alliance delivers unique Anti-Virus Appliance dedicated to stopping viruses at the network perimeter
October 2, 2000-- Nokia, a proven leader in network security infrastructure and McAfee, a Network Associates, Inc. business unit and the recognized leader in virus protection, today announced the WebShield for Nokia Appliance, a joint offering designed to leverage the growing trend toward network appliance implementations and managed services.
As a result of this agreement, Nokia extends its portfolio of market-leading network security appliances, while McAfee gains significant channel expansion through Nokia channel partners and managed service provider (MSP) customers.
This alliance allows both companies to more aggressively leverage Nokia's well-established global channel, and the explosion of the appliance market.>
``Email has become the mission critical application, and thus, email borne viruses have become one of the largest causes of business downtime,'' said Dan MacDonald, vice president and general manager, Nokia Internet Communications. ``Customers are actively looking for innovative solutions to this business problem. By utilizing a dedicated anti-virus appliance organizations can improve network security while maintaining network performance.''
``This relationship brings together the industry leaders in anti-virus and network security, to produce the most effective Internet virus protection available,'' said Gene Hodges, president of the McAfee division of Network Associates. ``Our collaboration has produced a solution that has the virus protection, speed, reliability, security and responsive service needed by Managed Service Providers and corporations around the world.''
The WebShield for Nokia Appliance integrates the market leading anti-virus software from McAfee and the high performance IP400 Series Network Application Platform from Nokia. This purpose-built appliance simplifies and accelerates the extension of virus protection to the network edge through advantages in deployment, performance, management, and support capabilities over current hardware and software combinations.
Nokia and McAfee engineers worked closely together to leverage Nokia's unique control over the hardware, OS, and networking functionality to fully optimize performance of the WebShield for Nokia Appliance, resulting in SMTP scanning throughput more than double the performance of existing solutions on comparable hardware platforms.
Increased global Internet connectivity has enabled email-borne viruses to spread faster and cause more destruction than ever before. According to independent research organization Computer Economics, the recent LoveLetter virus was the most widespread virus ever, causing an estimated $6.7 billion in damages worldwide. This outbreak alone caused more than half of Computer Economics' estimated $12.1 billion in damages from viruses in all of 1999. Even with anti-virus software installed on approximately 90 percent of corporate desktops, the likelihood of a company experiencing a computer virus has doubled for each of the past four years, according to ICSA computer Virus Prevalence survey.
Experts argue that stopping viruses at the network perimeter significantly decreases the opportunity for prevalent email-borne viruses to reach inside the enterprise and spread throughout the global network.
Consistent with the preference for the appliance model within the Firewall market, corporations are also expected to turn to appliances in the anti-virus market segment to address their demands for solutions that are tuned for high performance, robust security, and ease of management.
The WebShield for Nokia Appliance will be globally available Q4 2000 through the Nokia sales channel, 100% supported by Nokia's First Call, Final Resolution technical service and support.
About McAfee
McAfee, a Network Associates, Inc. business, provides comprehensive and low cost solutions to protect e-businesses from attacks by malicious Internet applets and viruses. McAfee Active Virus Defense is the award-winning multi-tier virus security solution that includes WebShield Internet gateway protection, GroupShield email server protection, NetShield for Web and file servers and VirusScan for the desktop and mobile worker. McAfee also provides scalable tools to manage virus security policy, updates and reporting over the Internet, with ePolicy Orchestrator and Enterprise SecureCast. All McAfee products are backed by one of the world's leading anti-virus research organizations, McAfee AVERT (Anti-Virus Emergency Response Team), the team which first identified Melissa and Bubbleboy, and protects customers against the increasingly complex and frequent Internet borne attacks that threaten to cripple e-business. For more information, McAfee can be
reached at 800-338-8754 or on the Internet at mcafeeb2b.com.
About Network Associates
With headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif., Network Associates, Inc. is a leading supplier of security and availability solutions for e-business. Network Associates' five business units, PGP Security, providing firewall, intrusion detection and encryption products, Sniffer Technologies, the leader in network and application management, Magic Solutions, providing web-based
service desk solutions, McAfee, delivering world class anti-virus products, and myCIO.com, an infrastructure ASP providing security and anti-virus services, all produce best-of-breed solutions leveraging core technologies to provide the security and availability needed for e-business. Network Associates is also a majority owner of McAfee.com, one of the world's largest
business to consumer application service providers. For more information, Network Associates can be reached at
972-308-9960 or on the Internet at nai.com.
Nokia Internet Communications
Nokia Internet Communications, headquartered in Mountain View, California, provides world class Network Security, Virtual Private Network and Wireless Software solutions that assure the security and reliability of corporate enterprise and managed service provider networks. Nokia is committed to enhancing the end user experience by enabling personal, trusted transactions for the Mobile Information Society. |
