V3 Awards: McAfee sheds light on 2013 mobile security threats

McAfee scooped the best business security award at this year's V3 Technology Awards.

Delighted with the victory, McAfee vice president Ross Allen took the time to discuss the company's experience of 2012 and offer some insights into what to expect in 2013.

V3: How does it feel to win the V3 2012 award for Best Business Security  Provider?

Ross Allen: It's a real honour winning the Best Business Security Provider award. Hearing that the voting readers of V3 are choosing McAfee solutions to protect their enterprises, employees and information is absolutely fantastic.

What makes McAfee's business portfolio unique?

The era of providing security simply by installing an antivirus application on a PC has long passed. Bolting on security after the fact is no longer sufficient. Security needs to be everywhere and should be built into every application, including at the hardware level. This is the McAfee ‘silicon to satellite' vision, which begins with security built into the firmware of computer hardware.

McAfee has partnered with Intel to integrate a McAfee agent on Intel hardware and is working with other hardware manufacturers on similar approaches. Beyond the silicon, security needs to be provided at every level of the stack, including applications, operating systems, websites, web applications, the cloud, mobile devices, and the infrastructure and satellites that provide connections.

What do you think has been the technological highlight of the year?

The technological highlight of the year has definitely been the proliferation of mobile devices. If you'd told me a year ago that there'd be 100 million tablets under the Christmas tree, I wouldn't have believed you. But here we are. It's amazing to think of the possibilities this opens up, but we must also be aware of the impact this has on the security landscape as a new attack vector.

What do you think has been a low point within the technology industry this year?

As a result of the rise of tablets, the low point has to be the dramatic fall in sales of traditional PCs.