McAfee CEO Says The Company Will Make Acquisitions, Investments To Grow

With its separation from Intel complete, McAfee CEO Chris Young said the security vendor will now look to expand its portfolio, which includes making acquisitions.

In an interview with CRN, Young said McAfee would have "available to us all options" as it looks to build out its portfolio, including building, partnering and buying products.

"One of the benefits of our focus in cyber is that we're able to put all of our energy around building out our product portfolio … Clearly, there is a fair amount of consolidation happening in our market. It is an active market, and we expect to be an active participant in that as one of the largest and most trusted players in the cybersecurity space," Young said.

[Related: Intel Security Re-Emerges As McAfee, A $2 Billion Security Company]

"We will seek to add pieces to that portfolio that we believe are going to help us solve the customer['s] problem … Adding pieces to our portfolio both organically and inorganically is what we will be doing when we separate [from Intel] … Stay tuned," Young said.

Young said McAfee would also be looking to make organic investments, citing examples of where the company has added capabilities in machine learning, analytics, intelligent security operations, and next-generation endpoint security. Last fall, the company rolled out new technologies around endpoint, data center, data protection and cloud security. It expanded its Data Exchange Layer (DXL) to new technology partners while providing OpenDXL, its open source threat intelligence network.

"I think there will be more consolidation around the security space," said Andrew Nowinski, senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray. He noted that endpoint security, where McAfee plays in part, is particularly ripe for consolidation.

"It will be interesting to see what McAfee does now from the standpoint of technology, but also through acquisition," said Jeremy Samide, CEO of North Olmsted, Ohio-based Stealthcare. "I think McAfee will want to remain as one of the top leaders in the space, as is their legacy, and I think you're starting to see a lot of consolidation in the marketplace," he said, citing the example of Symantec buying Blue Coat Systems last summer.

"I definitely think some acquisitions would be good," said Mark Miller, vice president of sales South Central for M&S Technologies, a Kudelski Security company.

He added: "There's a lot of new and exciting technology out there. [McAfee is] definitely a security company now, and they don't yet have every type of security technology in place."