Why Intel Bought McAfee

A year after the acquisition of McAfee by Intel, there's still discussion about just why Intel would be interested in a security company like Intel. The latest article to tackle this is on readwriteweb.com, and basically explains that Intel didn't buy McAfee to put security into silicon, like many speculated when the acquisition was first announced.

Instead it's because security for silicon is going to come more and more from software and putting that software lower in the stack, and that's the primary driver for Intel's acquisition according to the article.

That sort of leaves one wondering how much effort Intel's going to put into maintaining the security products that work much higher in the chain, like their Secure Web Gateway, which is an application level security device. We'll just have to wait and see.