McAfee Offers iPhone Security. Will Anyone Care?
Apple is not making it easy for security vendors like McAfee to get a toehold on the iPhone.
While McAfee recently announced it would sell anti-theft and limited data protection for iPhone for a one-time $20 fee, Apple plans to offer a far better protection package this fall -- and it won't charge a dime..
McAfee, which calls its service WaveSecure, has sold anti-theft and online data backup for Android, Blackberry, and Windows Phone smartphones for some time. Despite getting little help from Apple in delivering a comparable service for the iPhone, McAfee decided to release the iOS edition of WaveSecure anyway. (iOS is what Apple calls its iPhone operating system.)
"We see our role as being the security experts across platforms," said Darius Cheung, director of consumer mobile technology at McAfee, which was bought by chipmaker Intel a year ago for $7.7 billion. "We will consistently be the security vendor supplying solutions across platforms."
The promise holds true even when it doesn't seem entirely relevant. Because of the way Apple has designed iOS, McAfee can only back up the phone's contacts. On the anti-theft side, if an iPhone falls into the hands of a thief, the McAfee service can only locate the smartphone, show its location on a map, and remotely wipe the phone's contacts data.
That's something, but it's not a lot. In fact, it's not much at all.
McAfee also offers a service for large corporations that can do much more in protecting and managing employee smartphones. For small organizations, however, WaveSecure is the best McAfee can do for now.
In the fall, Apple's free iCloud service, available with iPhones that can be upgraded to iOS 5, will back up all the data on the phone: contacts, calendars, call logs, and data files. In addition, the phones come with a location-based service that can not only find the device on a map, but also wipe out all of its data remotely.
So why is McAfee even bothering? Well, besides being able to say its the security vendor for all mobile platforms, the company is hoping to eventually offer security services that will get Apple's blessing. "This is just the tip of the iceberg," Cheung said.
And at least for now, the tip of the iceberg is all Apple will allow McAfee to show.
