McAfee Announces Security Subscription Service

(Updated at 11:50am PDT 5/30/06) McAfee announced today an all-in-one security subscription service codenamed Falcon. Falcon will contain all major security suite components as well as PC backup and tune-up tools. It's essentially a competitor to Microsoft's Windows OneCare, expected soon, and Symantec's Genesis (also a codename), due out this fall. In fact, with a beta due out in a few weeks and an expected summer launch, McAfee may beat Symantec out of the gate.

For desktop PC users, Falcon is essentially the upgrade to McAfee Internet Security Suite 2006. The demo of Falcon that I saw addressed a few complaints we had with the excellent-performing 2006 suite, which we reviewed in All-in-One Security. Falcon will work with non-Internet Explorer browsers like Firefox and has a better-designed interface with easy access to advanced options. Other improvements: protection against rootkits, anti-phishing heuristics, detection of malware within images, scanning of USB devices such as thumb drives, home-network protection, and automated local backup. McAfee is considering including an option for online backup as well.

In the end, subscription services don't work that differently from traditional security software, which also require you to pay a fee for annual software and virus-definition updates. The move to subscription is largely a competitive one. Study after study show that many PC users are not regularly paying for security software updates; security companies are hoping that easy-to-manage annual subscriptions will change that pattern.