A week in security: Intel's shock move for McAfee

It was a relatively quiet week in security this week, until Thursday, when the biggest deal of recent years was announced; Intel making a shock $7.8bn move for security giant McAfee.

The acquisition works out at around $48 (£30) per share, and McAfee will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary within Intel's Software and Services Group.

Intel chief executive Paul Otellini stressed that the deal will help the chip firm meet the demand from users for a secure computing experience, just as it has delivered on the demand for improved connectivity and energy efficiency in the past

However, analysts were deeply sceptical about the move, expressing surprise that it was Intel that had made the move on McAfee after much speculation over the security vendor's future.

HP also got in on the M&A action this week with the acquisition of Fortify Software for an undisclosed sum. Fortify's products help customers to identify, detect and fix software vulnerabilities, reducing risk and helping to comply with stringent industry regulations such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard.

Elsewhere there was good news for the security industry as new Gartner figures suggested security software spending will reach a worldwide total of $16.5bn (£10.6bn) this year as the industry pulls further clear of recession.

Smartphone users were warned to beware of an Android application that installs a commercial spying tool on handsets.

Tap Snake looks like a clone of the 1970s game Snake, but once installed it runs a piece of Russian surveillance software called GPS SPY. The software updates a central server on the user's position every 15 minutes, and cannot be turned of

And finally RIM’s ongoing problems in India took a new turn this week, according to reports. First it emerged that the BlackBerry maker met with the Indian government and agreed to provide manual access to BlackBerry instant messages by 1 September, and automated access by year-end.

It then emerged that Indian officials may have come up with a way of monitoring encrypted corporate emails sent from BlackBerry devices, according to a government source. The method involves intercepting and making a copy of a corporate email at the moment it is sent to a company's enterprise server, and then sending it on to the ISP's monitoring systems.

If RIM agrees to this it could mean the revocation of the proposed ban on BES email services slated for 31 August.