McAfee Service For SMBs

The firewall solution further rounds out McAfee's ASaP managed antivirus offering originally targeted at consumers. McAfee has since expanded the solution to include small and midsize businesses, said Gary Brand, director of Santa Clara, Calif.-based Network Associates' channel group.

The managed service is available through partners, who in the future may have the option of offering it as their own managed service, he said.

For now, customers or resellers set up the firewall service by going to a Web site and making some minor file-based configurations. A software agent is then pushed out to the desktop, which automatically updates with the latest protection measures to block unauthorized network access and data theft, hacks, nukes, Trojans and denial-of-service attacks.

"ASaP is great for network engineers to be able to deploy new features and updates with a hands-off approach, and a lot of the intrusions are coming from inside now, so the desktop firewall protects them with the latest updates," said Marc Malafronte, SMB sales manager at Software House International, Somerset, N.J.

The service also pushes out the latest updates automatically to all the desktops on the customer's system, without every PC having to be connected to the McAfee ASaP Web site.

"For our business partners, it's an easy solution to set up and sell," Brand said. "So far the service [from a selling point] has really worked out well for our partner community."

The service costs about $2.70 per desktop, including basic support, Brand said.