Security specialist McAfee announced the general availability of its
Enterprise Mobility Management (McAfee EMM) 9.5 software. The EMM software now
includes integration with the company’s ePolicy Orchestrator (ePO) platform,
providing customers with unified management of their endpoint, network and data
security products. The end-to-end visibility and control provided by the McAfee
ePO platform is designed to help IT administrators strengthen their protection
and drive down the cost of managing their risk and security.
Enterprise Mobility Management software allows companies extend the data center
to smartphones and tablets in the same way that they do for laptops, leveraging
the native capabilities of the device and the enterprise IT infrastructure to deliver
native applications. Features of the latest version of the software include an
Enterprise App Store and a full API set for
mobile device management, giving IT administrators the ability to create a list
of recommended applications-based parameters such as the user and their roles
and responsibilities, and sublists, which can be sent to individuals or groups.
"Consumerization of IT has changed the way organizations need to think
about security," said Todd Gebhart, McAfee executive vice president and
general manager of consumer, mobile and small business. "According to
recent McAfee research commissioned by Evaluserve, as many as 41 percent of
large organizations have reduced their IT costs and increased productivity by
allowing employees to use their personal devices for business. With McAfee EMM
software, IT managers can now secure their digital assets against data loss and
increased threat vectors with the same control, visibility and security they
have with their laptops, desktops and servers."
McAfee now offers Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)
capabilities through the Microsoft Certificate Authority, providing
authentication for devices accessing the corporate network. Smartphones and
tablets can now connect to the network VPN using client certificates, in the
same way as laptops. In addition to support for the Android 2.2 and Motorola
Droid Pro, McAfee EMM software now extends support for Android 2.3 and offers
full support for Android-based tablets. Lotus Domino users using Lotus
Traveller 8.5.2 can now leverage the capabilities of McAfee EMM software as
well, the company noted.
"In the last year alone we’ve seen such a range of user devices in our
workplace, from smartphones to Apple iPads," said Sumit Sehgal,
information security manager at Riverside Healthcare. "The fact that these
devices are mobile means that they’re also easily lost or stolen, introducing
risk. McAfee EMM software has really helped us to be able to say ‘yes’ to these
devices and manage them as an extension of our security infrastructure. We can
now secure and manage mobile devices as we do any other endpoint."