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McAfee Set To Acquire Secure Computing, a Top Contender in Detecting Malware and Spyware

By: Dian Schaffhauser

9/24/2008

During the same week security vendor McAfee said it intended to acquire Secure Computing in a deal valued at $465 million, Secure surfaced as a top contender in the results of testing done by AV Test Labs. In a comparison of 34 suite products, AV said Secure Web Anti-Malware (formerly WebWasher) detected 99.7 percent of malware present and 99.2 percent of adware and spyware, placing it third in both categories behind G DATA Software's AVK 2009 and Avira's Premium Security Suite 2008 for malware and AVK 2009 and F-Secure 2009 for adware and spyware.

AV Test Labs' research simulated a real-world combination of malware threats and illustrated the varying degrees of competitive product effectiveness in detecting these threats.

For this test, AV Test Labs only used current samples that were seen spreading (or which were distributed by malware authors) within the last three months. A total of 1,164,662 unique malware samples were used for this test, including worms, backdoors, bots (zombies), and Trojan Horses. The test also included detection of 94,291 unique adware and spyware samples.

Secure Web provides protection for user-initiated Web traffic against threats such as malware hidden in blended content or hidden in encrypted SSL traffic. Secure's purchase by McAfee is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2008.


Dian Schaffhauser is a writer who covers technology and business. Send your higher education technology news to her at dian@dischaffhauser.com.