McAfee UK Event December 2009
As many of you know, I write about free pc security programs and also help many of you out on a 1-to-1 basis. Today I am going to write about something different.
I was invited by Colin Mercer and Aaron Evans-Aghoghogbe of 1000heads.com, the 'Word of Mouth People' to attend an event that they had organised with McAfee.
The invite was quite a surprise and something that I looked forward to attending.
The day was to include meeting members of the McAfee Team and looking behind the scenes to see what they actually do. This was held at McAfee's Headquarters in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, UK.
There was only a small group of us and many of us had never crossed paths before, so it was good to meet others that had similar interests as I do and these were Craig Richards from mac.com, Liam Green-Hughes from greenhughes.com and Boyan Krosnov from fiwave.com
Arriving at McAfee one would expect to find a flashy building filled with the latest gadgets and gizmo's. It was nothing like it! You could easily drive past and you would not even notice it, it is very plain and discreet. Inside is no different, there are no rooms full of 'flashy' stuff to amaze visitors.
For McAfee this was also a first time opportunity for bloggers to see inside and chat with the team, normally they deal with corporate users who get a tour, but this is because it is a business venture. To allow 'ordinary' people in was a first for them, and like those of us who attended, didn't really know what to expect.
McAfee recognised that there was a problem some time ago when people were advising users to uninstall the software as it was big and heavy, used too many resources which slowed the users computer. I put my hands up, I was also one who advocated the removal of McAfee products, which were installed on OEM machines. So they have worked hard on this to make it lighter and easier for the end user.
We had an introduction and overview from Guy Roberts, who is the Director of McAfee Labs. This place is the nerve center for McAfee. This is where the updates, DAT's and definition files come from, and with the Artemis cloud based app, there are some 50 million consumers - that's a lot of people!
With Artemis when new malware is detected it utilises the collective power of users and the internet to close what they call the 'protection gap' and deliver protection in real-time. With traditional antivirus products this can take 60 to 72 hours for the definitions to be updated, Artemis does this within 39 minutes! This was explained in excellent detail by Chris Barton who is the Lead Research Scientist.
In the labs there are multiple machines using automation to scan tens of thousands of sites searching for malware, trojans, viruses, PUP's and more. The labs are no Hollywood set, but it is very functional with machines running various automated tools as well as being visually watched and everything carefully monitored, checked and double checked. Mostyn Beechey is the Senior DAT Production Manager and as with the rest of the team, very passionate about what they do and how they do it.
There was a Virus Identification show presented by Alex Hinchcliffe who is the Malware Research Manager. Using various techniques he showed how viruses and worms infect machines and also how 'Bots' are utilized and 'chat' to each other and create enormous botnets, as in the case of Koobface and Conficker.
Trojans such as password stealers are on the increase whereas traditional viruses are on the decrease. These trojans are used by highly skilled criminals, and for them it is big business - a very lucrative one too, and many are downloaded by unwary users who click enticing looking links or rogue programs.
I learnt a great deal from the team, there was no sales pitch or anything like it, it was all very informal and some of the team joined us for a drink and meal afterwards where the discussions continued.
We spent over 5 hours at McAfee and also ran over the time allocated, but there was also no rush or pressure to change this and just over 3 hours in the pub and restaurant afterwards. There were also discussions about future plans and a few other things which I am not permitted to disclose, what I will say is watch that space!
McAfee aim to increase their detection capabilities and reduce the footprint which will have less impact on end users when they are using their computers. I think we all learnt a great deal not only about how McAfee works, they also learnt what made us tick too and it was a very enjoyable day with open discussion and some good points to debate.
So my thanks go to Colin, Aaron and Cherry from 1000heads and to the McAfee Team.
If you want to learn more about Global Threats:
Click here for McAfee's 'Mapping The Mal Web'
Click here to learn more about Artemis and the technology behind it
McAfee do offer some free services too, click here for details of:
Site Advisor, so you can check on a sites ratings, a free scan based on McAfee's VirusScan Engine and a World Virus Map.
Surf Safer, Surf with WOT - Click Here or the links below
Web of Trust for Internet Explorer
Web of Trust for Firefox
Web of Trust for Google Chrome
Free PC Security, Malicious Sites, Malware Distribution, McAfee Labs, Technology
