In one of his first major keynotes, the new president and CEO of McAfee said the threat landscape is changing and expanding, and the security vendor is looking to take on security risk management as a whole.
Walking off the stage and down the aisle in his Tuesday afternoon keynote at the Interop trade show in Las Vegas, Dave DeWalt told the audience of IT and business professionals that we will see more malware in the next 18 months than we have in the past 20 years. Researchers at the company's legendary Avert Labs are seeing 17,000 new phishing sites every month. He pointed to a 50% to 80% growth in spyware.
"Pretty amazing," he said several times. "I believe there's a whole new ecosystem in security and it's growing."
In both his keynote and in an interview afterwards with InformationWeek, DeWalt was quick to make it clear that McAfee is more than an anti-virus vendor. After about 45 days on the job, DeWalt said the threats are far-reaching and McAfee is moving to take on the new risks.
The 42-year-old man newly at McAfee's helm joined the security company on April 2. In the interview, he said he's been going at full speed for his nearly two months on the job. He said the company had a lot of "holes" in its management team with many positions sitting empty when he arrived. Most of those holes, he noted, are now filled.
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