McAfee to Acquire SafeBoot

In a perfect fit, McAfee has announced its intent to acquire SafeBoot. SafeBoot provides encryption technologies that apply to end-users. Using this software enterprises can mandate that all files/folders be encrypted on all machines, including filservers.

As the risk of data loss via theft grows higher by the day (driven by the reduction in the size of computing leading to ultra-high mobility but in a highly insecure environment more than anything else), it's becoming more and more urgent for companies handling sensitive data to protect the users whose data it holds.

As the many headlines scream about how large companies are getting clumsier with their data, a movement among both users as well as the govt policy makers is gaining ground to punish such companies whenever they lose data on account of insufficient security, negligence, internal fraud, lack of audit control etc.

One other motivator for organizations to implement data encryption on all machines is that even in case of data loss, a disclosure to the effect is not needed as long as the data was encrypted. This can help them save face while they try to track the miscreants.

There are many companies offering solutions for disk encryption (including Microsoft, of course), but the differentiator will be not only cost but also ease of use. The harder a piece of software is to use, the more likely it'll become shelfware.

McAfee has a great advantage here - its products are transparent to its users, and a deployment of its encryption solution could be made easily painless using its ePolicyOrchestrator software.
Overall, this is a very good purchase because the market for such solutions is not only nascent and growing, but the growth is expected to surge as more and more companies decide to go for data protection on all of their systems - both mobile (laptops, PDAs, mobile phones etc) as well as stationary (desktops, fileservers, storage systems, database servers etc).

Be safe!