Thu, April 30, 2009 — Santa Clara, Calif.-based security vendor McAfee Inc. released a software-as-a-service Web security tool for protecting a distributed workforce from Web threats, while rendering IT departments fewer upfront costs in light of current budgetary constraints.

Especially in tough economic times, a SaaS model of software delivery, like the McAfee Web Protection Service, saves cash-strapped organizations money because IT staff don’t have to spend valuable time managing on-site equipment, said Mark Campbell, senior product marketing manager with McAfee Inc. “They get the advantages of having a tool that is always on, always up-to-date and with uptime guarantees,” said Campbell.

One challenge with on-premise tools, he continued, is that when vendors issue a feature update, a period of time can elapse before the enhancements are up and running in the environment, said Campbell.

Features of the hosted security offering include reputation-based filtering, based on McAfee’s reputation system TrustedSource, to block constantly morphing threats. There’s flexible policy manager for setting policies for certain employee groups like access to certain social networking sites by contract employees versus executive management. Users have the ability to run reports and use dashboards to reap insight into an organization’s Web usage. “Are they spending all day on Facebook … and see how this aligns with our appropriate usage of Web tools?” said Campbell.

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