McAfee stresses benefits of open approach to partners

The security industry is gathering at RSA and the event is being used as a platform to make announcements, with McAfee among those unveiling enhancements to its alliances programme.

The vendor has entered into eight new partnerships and announced seven new certified integrations to its McAfee Security Innovation Alliance (SIA) and CASB Connect Programme. 

The security player says it is committed to create an open approach to cloud security that involves collaboration with a wide ecosystem of partners. It has been one of the main movers and shakers in the Open Cybersecurity Alliance (OCA), which was launched last October.

The latest development sees McAfee add a number of vendors to the list of those that are part of the SIA programme, including A10 Networks, AttackIQ, Cythereal, Mimecast, Nutanix and OpenText.

On the CASB front, the vendor has added to the number of cloud service providers and partners that can build API connectors to its MVISION Cloud platform, including Atlassian, Clarizen, DbCom and Introhive.

McAfee has been keen to stress to partners that they can not only get involved with the open source aspects, but can also take advantage of the fruits of an ever-expanding ecosystem of developers and vendors.

“Securing data in the cloud is a shared responsibility that doesn’t fall solely on one party,” said Ed Baker, McAfee’s EMEA partner lead. “All stakeholders, from cloud service providers to channel partners and end-users, have a role to play in this layered defence.

“These new certified integrations and innovations to our Security Innovation Alliance and CASB Connect programmes demonstrate McAfee’s continued commitment to collaboration in the security industry. Taking a collaborative approach is crucial if we are to meet today’s complex security challenges head-on.”

McAfee now has a total of 160 integration partners through McAfee SIA and McAfee CASB Connect Programme.

“Not all cloud service providers have the APIs needed to build integration to MVISION Cloud,” said Javed Hasan, global head of enterprise products strategy and alliances at McAfee.

“Even in those cases, the CASB Connect framework can now be used to quickly onboard a SaaS application to McAfee’s CASB platform with support for the most critical use cases out of the box.”

In terms of the Open Cybersecurity Alliance (OCA), McAfee has become a member of the organisation’s technical steering committee, along with AT&T, IBM, Packet Clearinghouse and Tripwire.

The OCA has also used RSA to announce that it has come up with an open source language, Open DXL Ontology, to make it easier to connect security technologies in an open source standard and code.

“With the adoption of public cloud and the explosion of connected devices, the ability for enterprises to quickly respond to threats across ever-changing technologies, and even beyond perimeters, is critical,” said Brian Rexroad, vice-president of security platforms at AT&T.

“OCA is driving an industrial shift in interoperability, with the OpenDXL Ontology to support security at scale.”