Focus 2010: McAfee updates ePO with Security Management 5

McAfee has boosted the security options for e-Policy Orchestrator (ePO) with the addition of Security Management 5.

The update allows administrators to receive a complete overview of security systems, while giving developers a new set of APIs to integrate security tools such as Risk Manager into ePO.

McAfee's ePO is a central element of the firm's enterprise IT management platform, and the company hopes to mesh security protections into that offering.

"When we talk about the Security Management platform, we start to view ePO as one view on that platform," said Brian Foster, McAfee's senior vice president of product management.

"We are working on how we expose ePO into the cloud and how we tie all of those products on-premise."

Foster suggested that the integration of ePO and Security Management could allow companies to combine and streamline security analysis and operations.

Administrators could combine Risk Management with tools such as Microsoft's System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) to handle patching, for example.

Foster explained that a company could use Security Management to compare vulnerability risk from monthly security bulletins and create a blueprint to prioritise and deploy updates through SCCM on user systems.