Brocade to partner McAfee for security solutions

Mumbai , Feb 18 : Brocade (Nasdaq: BRCD) and McAfee, Inc. (NYSE: MFE) announced that they have entered a strategic partnership to deliver a broad set of fully interoperable end-to-end network security solutions.

As part of the partnership, Brocade will work in conjunction with McAfee to integrate critical security capabilities into the Brocade family of networking products.

The pairing of leading-edge Brocade networking products with McAfee's extensive security capabilities enables customers to deploy and maintain highly reliable and secure network environments - from endpoint to the edge and the core - that are protected against a wide range of security threats, including malicious activities, data breaches, network intrusions and policy violations, said the company.

According to a recent survey on IT spending intentions conducted by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), information security initiatives ranked in the top four among a list of 25 IT priority areas for 2010.

In particular, network security was considered to be a top priority among IT managers for the coming year, as "increased Internet and internal bandwidth demand faster network security systems" that can protect data within all levels of the networking environment.

"The ever-changing threat landscape coupled with convergence in the campus LAN arena calls for the integration of best-in-class networking and security products," said Jon Oltsik, senior principal analyst at ESG.

"In today's challenging and competitive business climate, enterprises must constantly keep a watchful eye across the entire network infrastructure to preempt a possible attack and be prepared to act if the unexpected occurs."

"Keeping data secure is a battle that must be waged on multiple fronts, especially at the network level," said Dan Ryan, executive vice president and general manager of the Network Security business unit at McAfee.

By integrating a broad range of Brocade IP networking products with industry-leading McAfee products spanning the entire security spectrum - from firewall to intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDS/IPS) to network access control (NAC) - customers will be able to deploy and maintain an effective end-to-end security solution throughout their entire network.