We have antiphishing technologies today that try to assure that you don't connect to a site that's imitating a legitimate business," he says. "We can now combine the McAfee content with the SiteAdvisor database and make that a much more powerful solution."
In April, McAfee paid more than $70 million for SiteAdvisor, a remarkable sum for a 14-person company that had just released its first product, a free browser plug-in. But McAfee says SiteAdvisor will be a key point of differentiation from competitors Symantec and Microsoft.
The SiteAdvisor product is compelling to McAfee, the company says, because it focuses on something that most security software isn't doing: helping users "make better decisions about how they use risky areas of the "Net," says Christopher Bolin, McAfee's chief technology officer, speaking at the company's financial analyst conference this week.
SiteAdvisor works with Web browsers to warn people when they are about to visit a site that's been associated with spam.spyware or computer viruses. The company has built a database of Website ratings, combined from millions of automated visits.
The company had been planning to release a premium version of SiteAdvisor in September, but that target has now been pushed back to year's end because of the acquisition.
