RSSMcAfee Delivers Beta of Security Suites
By Nate Mook | Published June 16, 2006, 1:07 PM
McAfee on Friday released betas of two software suites based on its new security service platform code-named "Falcon," first announced last month and intended to compete with Windows Live OneCare and Symantec's upcoming "Genesis" platform.
Under development for the past year, Falcon combines the company's antivirus, anti-spyware, and "threat watch" technologies. It includes SystemGuard to look for certain behaviors that may indicate virus, spyware or hacker activity, and alert the consumer before the issue does damage. Additionally, X-Ray detects and kills rootkits, as well as malicious programs that attempt to hide themselves.
For protection while browsing the Web, each of McAfee's Falcon-based offerings will include SiteAdvisor to identify and notify users of potentially dangerous Web sites. Red, yellow and green icons are displayed to indicate the safety rating of a site while users browse and search the Web.
Like Windows Live OneCare, McAfee has designed a central SecurityCenter for managing the security on a PC. Customers will also be able to monitor the security status of other computers on the network. Falcon will assist in setting up secure networks as well, simplifying a confusing task for many first-time wireless network users.
McAfee plans to release four security services built atop the Falcon platform. McAfee Total Protection Beta is available for testing and includes the complete range of capabilities. It adds Web filtering, additional security for online transitions, local backups and desktop cleanup tools.
"Our Total Protection beta service goes far beyond traditional malware protection to shield every aspect of the consumer's digital life, including network and wireless security management, Web-based search protection and backup technologies -- all combined into a single, easy-to-use service," said Marc Solomon, McAfee's Director of Product Management.
McAfee VirusScan Plus Beta, also available for download Friday, includes only the core protection features from Falcon. Coming later this summer is McAfee PC Protection Plus, which does not include the network monitoring and threat analysis tools that come with Total Protection.
McAfee Internet Security Suite, meanwhile, will feature all the protections included in McAfee Total Protection with the exception of those for wireless home networks.
More information and beta downloads of McAfee Total Protection and VirusScan Plus are available at beta.mcafee.com. Total Protection testers can additionally sign up to trial a new online backup service for digital photos and personal files.
McAfee has always proved the best of the lot in terms of performance and upgrades both in quality and function. Hope this "beta" tests prove a better software for "protection" and "security"........ Be da lucky ones to be secured always ....
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|Between Windows Defender, Antivir/AVG/Avast and Kerio/Zone Alarm, what's the point of having a paid security suite?
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|Found this slowed my computer down the same as everyone else, what use to take less than one minute to get from the windows welcome screen to the desktop screen was increased by 4 minutes. Also found that i couldn't connect to my wireless network using the mcafee wireless network program as for some reason it wouldn't except half of the letters on the keyboard to be entered into the password box.
On the plus side it was very easy to uninstal.
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|Dont Install it, it slowed my pc totally down and when i uninstalled it ,it wiped my whole pc out, deleted all my files and programs!
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|I know you didn't install this beta program on a computer with important information without so much as one backup.
Right?
And I find it a little hard to believe that uninstalling any program in Windows could wipe your whole disk, unless the program does something like disk-encryption.
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|I gave this one a go on two systems; one a Centrino 1.7GHz with 512MB of RAM, and the other a 2.5GHz Athlon64 system with 1GB of RAM. Both suffered the same horrific fate: longer boot times, sluggish response, and loads of useless extras that I couldn't seem to skip installing in the first place.
While I didn't end up with crash after crash, and while it did protect me from a myriad of attempted intentional infections, the cost to performance simply wasn't worth it. I will continue to retest over the course of the beta, but given past experiences with McAffee's commercial software I doubt we'll see a performance improvement.
Symantec and McAfee both could take a lesson from other anti-malware companies. These two companies should really take the following to heart: Eset's heuristics (and now F-Prot, with one of NOD32's heuristics experts working there now) and low system req, kaspersky's updates, interface, and low system req, and the simple yet effective UIs of F-Prot 6.0 Beta and Antivir.
Syamntec and McAfee are the market leaders because they're the marketING leaders. So long as they continue wasting CPU cycles and memory space with programs that are outclassed in all categories by cheaper lesser-knowns, I don't see myself recommending them to any of my commercial customers again.
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|Horrific is being nice. It took my computer about 3 minutes just to show the splash screen and another 15-30 seconds to be usable. I know I need more memory, but give me a break!
I managed to disable most of the useless features, but it didn't help much. It only slightly improved boot time. Hopefully they will work on that... I might test again if they refresh the beta.
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|Poor antivirus... why trust anything they make?
No thanks!
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|Don't install it. It's crap. I have a Pentium 4 2.8 GHZ computer with 512MB of ram, and it REALLY REALLY slowed my system down. I went back to what I had.
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|Who gives a damn about it? :| Even McAfee themself are spamming the hell out of me, so then don't even mention about their crap.
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