Both announcements are intended to "set a new standard for comprehensive malware protection", said Mike Fey, worldwide CTO for McAfee.
Pat Calhoun, senior vice president and general manager of network security at McAfee, explained that the requirement for advanced threat mitigation demands a move away from signature-based detection to behaviour-based detection, a move which the McAfee advancements conform to.
ValidEdge sandboxing technology was acquired by McAfee in late 2012, and provides "advanced threat protection by running suspected malware in a sandbox and learning what impact the malware sample would have on an endpoint." The acquisition, said Calhoun, has rreated a "paradigm shift in how we protect our customers. Our customers no longer need to worry about botnets", he said confidently.
The McAfee 'zoo' now contains more than 110 million unique malware samples, Calhoun announced, with one piece of malware being discovered by McAfee every second.
While McAfee proudly displayed their malware detection statistics, which positioned them ahead of Symantec, Websense, Cisco, BlueCoat and other competitors, they insisted that they envision that lead widening, with "the expectation to have a malare block rate of 99%" due to the acquisition of ValidEdge.
McAfee announced the future launch of an advanced threat defense product to be released to market in Q3 2013. "In the next three years at McAfee, you'll see more innovation that the last ten years", predicted Fey.