BEST BRANDED NAMES IN COMPUTER SOFTWARES

Type	Wholly owned subsidiary
Industry	Computer software Computer security
Fate	Acquired by Intel
Founded	1987[1]
Founder(s)	John McAfee
Headquarters	2821 Mission College Blvd.[2]Santa Clara, California,United States
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Michael DeCesare (Co-President) Todd Gebhart (Co-President)
Products	Data Protection, Database Security, Email & Web Security, Endpoint Protection, Mobile Security, Network Security, Risk & Compliance, Security-as-a-Service (Security SaaS), Security Management
Parent	Intel Corporation
Website	www.mcafee.comhome.mcafee.com

McAfee, Inc.  is a computer security company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, USA. It markets software and services to home users, businesses and the public sector. On August 19, 2010, electronics company Intel agreed to purchase McAfee for $7.68 billion (£5 billion). The acquisition closed on February 28, 2011

History

The company was founded in 1989 as McAfee Associates, named for its founder John McAfee. McAfee was incorporated in the state of Delaware in 1992. Network Associates was formed in 1997 as a merger of McAfee Associates and Network General. In 2004, a major restructuring occurred. In the spring, the company sold its Magic Solutions business to Remedy, a subsidiary of BMC Software. In the summer of 2004, the company sold the Sniffer Technologies business to a venture capital backed firm named 'Network General' - the same name as the original owner of Sniffer Technologies. Also, the company changed its name back to McAfee to reflect its focus on security-related technologies.

Among other companies bought and sold by McAfee (formerly known as Network Associates) is Trusted Information Systems, which developed the Firewall Toolkit, which was the free software foundation for the commercial Gauntlet Firewall, which was later sold by McAfee to Secure Computing Corporation. Network Associates, as a result of brief ownership of TIS Labs/NAI Labs/Network Associates Laboratories/McAfee Research, was highly influential in the world of Open Source software, as that organization produced portions of the Linux, FreeBSD, and Darwin operating systems, and developed portions of theBIND name server software and SNMP version 3.

Leading up to the TIS Labs acquisition, McAfee had acquired Calgary, Alberta, Canada-based FSA Corporation, which helped the company diversify its security offerings away from just client-based antivirus software by bringing on board its own network and desktop encryption technologies. The FSA team also oversaw the creation of a number of other technologies that were leading edge at the time, including firewall, file encryption, and public key infrastructure product lines. While those product lines had their own individual successes including PowerBroker (written by Dean Huxley and Dan Freedman and now sold by BeyondTrust), the growth of antivirus ware always outpaced the growth of the other security product lines. It is fair to say that the company remains best known for its antivirus and antispam product lines.