14 DAY TRIAL // Although McAfee is one of the top security companies on the market, the firm struggles to get new technologies which might bring new consumers to their products. Today, McAfee announced that it has reached an agreement to buy ScanAlert Inc. for no less than $51 million and get new solutions designed to protect users while shopping online. In case you never heard of ScanAlert, I'm pretty sure you saw at least once the 'Hacker Safe' logo on some websites, the certification being used to inform the visitors that they are on a protected platform. Hacker Safe is already implemented on lots of websites but from now on, McAfee will include it into its Web Security Group.
"ScanAlert pioneered vulnerability assessment and certification for e-commerce sites to help eliminate one of the greatest risks to consumers' financial information. By becoming part of McAfee, we believe ScanAlert can extend Web certification to the next level, greatly benefiting consumers and the businesses who serve them," said Ken Leonard, chief executive officer of ScanAlert.
The acquisition is supposed to be closed in the first quarter of 2008 so we'll probably see its first results sometimes next year. The only shopping industry grew up a lot and it is expected to reach new milestones this year as the holiday season might bring some huge revenues for the companies which invested into the market.
"Consumers are expected to spend nearly $160 billion dollars this year on products and services online, providing personal credit card information to e-commerce Web sites, many of which have traditionally been under-protected," said Dave DeWalt, chief executive officer and president of McAfee. "Through this acquisition, we will enhance McAfee's triple play protection-securing consumers on the PC, Web and mobile platforms-by integrating ScanAlert's e-commerce security certification service into our SiteAdvisor Web rating system. This will create the industry's only service that helps consumers stay safe as they search, surf, and now shop."