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Secure Computing Sold to McAfee – What a Waste of Human Life

23rd September 2008 By 8 Comments

Press release at Secure Computing website confirming that they have been sold to McAfee – its a sad day when one of the best security technology companies gets the kiss of death.

Secure Computing – unique

There are several parts to Secure Computing, but the three main elements SnapGear, WebWasher and Sidewinder. The SnapGear is a SME firewall that is absolutely brilliant, a small appliance that includes a proxy, firewall, wireless, ethernet ports all for a few hundred bucks using Linux.

The WebWasher product is not one of my favourites, but it has a very nice interface which makes it easy to use.

The SideWinder firewall product is so complicated it makes your eyes spin, but once mastered, it is an amazingly secure and versatile piece of kit. I haven’t kept up to date, but they were integrating the remnants of the CyberGuard acquisition (or vice versa, it was never quite clear).

On the whole, a fine family of products and I never understood why the company did not grow more.

MacAfee – kiss of death

For most people in IT infrastructure, MacAfee is something of a running joke. Taking mediocrity seriously and producing competently average products that turn a sow into a pigs ear for many years, I don’t believe that this is great move for Secure Computing.

My guess is that MacAfee wants the SnapGear product to package for home users, and they will make some attempt to re-enter the corporate market with the high end products, but will ultimately fail.

Blue Coat is the winner

The winner here is probably Blue Coat, since many corporate IT departments will no longer consider WebWasher as a filtering proxy, and move to Blue Coat Content Filter.

Cisco WAAS uses ((oh all right, a preference for)) Secure Computing SmartFilter for http content filtering, I wonder what will happen there also.

Wrap Up

Most readers will blankly look at me and say, hey, its all Cisco, right ? But it isn’t, Security requires an ecosystem with high levels of diversity provide a lifecycle of security. For example. Cisco does not produce an application proxy ((except in niche markets such as the Cisco ACE WAF, or WAAS with inspection, but these are sidelines not the main attraction)) , and companies like Secure Computing offered unique products.

Without them, the Security game is a little bit less that it was.

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About Greg Ferro

Greg Ferro is a Network Engineer/Architect, mostly focussed on Data Centre, Security Infrastructure, and recently Virtualization. He has over 20 years in IT, in wide range of employers working as a freelance consultant including Finance, Service Providers and Online Companies. He is CCIE#6920 and has a few ideas about the world, but not enough to really count.

He is a host on the Packet Pushers Podcast, blogger at EtherealMind.com and on Twitter @etherealmind and Google Plus

  • Tim

    Hmmm, seems like McAfee sold these guys off the firewall products just a few years ago. Anyone remember how much?

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/02/14/nai_sells_firewall_business/

    I wonder why SC sold and why McAfee bought? There must be more to this one than simple economics?

    • http://etherealmind.com Greg Ferro

      The NAI firewalls were really Enterprise products, and McAfee tried but failed to enter the space. The only thing that stuck was the Virus stuff.

      My guess is that they want the SnapGear for SOHO, the rest is just baggage. SnapGear has already got content filtering proxy, mail gateway and access-lists already. They can add the virus and content scanning then sell it as a home firewall. The SnapGear uses the Motorola Coldfire processor, so it can be manufactured cheap.

      Maybe they want another shot at the Enterprise market, hard to believe because not too many people take them seriously.

  • Justa Guy

    Simple competition by purchase. Buy it, destroy it, leave customers with no alternative.

  • http://geekgaucho.blogspot.com Fernando Cassia

    I agree that seeing small firms disappear and engulfed by large corporations (the bigger the firm, the more clueless the execs get in their ivory towers).

    Yet, Snapgear went from being an innovative firm to virtually STALLING after the cyberguard acquisition.

    I don’t know many of the kit you mention, I just own a Snapgear Lite2+, and what I know is that firmware updates had stopped around mid 2005 at version 1.8something.

    And only NOW I found at the McAfee page a download link for a 1.8.12 firmware dated 2009. That would be the first firmware update in four years.

    I know, it’s kinda amazing that a four-years old product is still not only useful and still relevant but also supported.

    I don’t know what Cyberguard did, but it certainly felt that it concentrated on newer more expensive models while leaving Lite/Lite2+ customers on their own.

    What certainly I cannot understand is why there’s no community around these devices. I expected to find forums, tweaks, third party software, even unofficial firmware with additional features. But I found nothing.

    FC
    PS: Someone tell McAfee that since there’s linux inside, that they should publish the GPL source code of the firmware, now that the snapgear site is gone.

    • http://etherealmind.com Greg Ferro

      I agree with you. The Snapgear was a great product and is sadly missed. The company that made it is still in business, developing other products so maybe they will do another one in the future. Here’s hoping.

  • Scott Allen

    The Snapgear became our router of choice a few years back, rock solid routers at a good price. The real question is, where do we go from here? What are the most worthy alternatives?

    We evaluated Fortinet routers before finding the Snapgear line, but how else has the SMB router/firewall landscape changed in the last few years that would affect which product lines we should be looking at?

    Any suggestions would be appreciated.

  • Mocky

    You know what ? McAfee has decided to kill SnapGear series. Check out my.securecomputing.com . Ever since they messed up my anti virus subscription licenses, I swear that I won’t go back to them anymore but sadly the very thing that I installed for my company network turned out acquired by them, and now killing it. I guess from now on “no more US made” crap but Chinese/Indian/Taiwanese made hardware. Risky ? Well I just have take the chances.

    • http://etherealmind.com Greg Ferro

      And McAfee wonders why we laugh at them.