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McAfee S-1
- maximur 6y agoIs this new?
- xoxoy 6y ago...yes?
- ciarannolan 6y agoDid you click the link before commenting? The date is in the first line.
- Scipio_Afri 6y agoEverything is new when you were seemingly born yesterday... the date is the very first line "As filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on September 28, 2020"
- Dahoon 6y agoDoes McAfee ever do something that isn't bad or worse?
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y agoPerhaps a more neutral phrasing: What is the value proposition for McAfee, in a world where basic anti-malware is built into most major OSs and their competitors are largely viewed as superior for the functions that they can offer?
- Spooky23 6y agoThey have a management plane that is still an asset for some people, and places with compliance requirements will use their crypto tools. Security tools are an industry that’s all about m&a. They can buy a few startups and cobble together a suite of some sort.
- jameslk 6y agoI guess it begs to be asked: why has McAfee decided to IPO now as opposed to any other time in the past few decades?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- AlphaSite 6y agoWho’s it’s current owner? Since intel sold them, I assume they’ve gone between owners?
- tomashertus 6y ago"On September 7, 2016, Intel announced a strategic deal with TPG Capital to convert Intel Security into a joint venture between both companies called McAfee. That deal closed on April 3, 2017. Thoma Bravo took a minority stake in the new company, and Intel maintains a 49% stake." Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McAfee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McAfee
- tptacek 6y agoMcAfee has been public in one form or another for over 25 years. This S-1 is for the most recent iteration of the company, which was spun out of Intel in 2017. (McAfee, then in its NETA form, was the first public company I worked for.)
- awalton 6y ago> why has McAfee decided to IPO now as opposed to any other time in the past few decades All of the tech companies see where the economy is going, and they all know it's time to bunker down. Going public is a good way to raise a nice burst of cash they can sit on to get through the really bad times ahead, especially while the market is still hot enough to raise said money.
- tehlike 6y agoAs long as fed prints money...
- jjcm 6y agoI really wonder who's going to buy in to McAfee. Their original founder is outspoken against them, their primary product is built into every OS these days, and they've been selling off their brand trust in exchange for revenue. Their revenue growth with their current strategy is purely optimized for short term growth with catastrophic long term outlook. They even say they don't have a plan for what to do with their money. In their filing under "Use of Proceeds" they state their objectives with the funds are to a.) pay back a previous loan b.) "the remainder for working capital and other general corporate purposes, including the acquisition of, or investment in complementary products, technologies, solutions, or businesses, although we have no present commitments or agreements to enter into any acquisitions or investments." This really looks like a last-ditch effort to salvage the company and pay off a loan they couldn't.
- edoceo 6y agoB is boilerplate. Basically saying "we'll use the money for smart things". Everyone I've ever met seeking capital says this, I'm sure it's been in every S-1 I've read and I said the same words when I was seeking capital. Oh, and it's non-binding so it's still possible to use the money for dumb things.
- technion 6y agoJust to expand on this, the "McAfee SECURE" logo was sold to PathDefender (not TrustedSite) and all those McAfee logos you see on websites aren't operated by McAfee any more.
- _fat_santa 6y agoEvery time I find one of those "McAfee SECURE" logos I cringe because they are so tacky. Like please tell me exactly how MacAfee is keeping me safe on this website.
- WorldPeas 6y agoI doubt they even do a proper pentest evaluation, they just say "oh this site looks reputable" and slap it on.
- microtherion 6y agoShouldn't the Risk Factors section include a paragraph about the risk, nay certainty, that the eponymous founder will tarnish the company's brand by expounding on his outlandish activities (e.g. https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/1067415394279936000 https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/106741539427993600...)?
- austhrow743 6y agoHe already has the top YouTube result for "how to uninstall McAfee" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKgf5PaBzyg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKgf5PaBzyg If he's already doing something, and like you say its a certainty that he'll continue, is that really a risk?
- microtherion 6y agoThe risk is that it's impossible to predict what he'll do next. I don't think "Sex with a whale" was on too many people's bingo card.
- edoceo 6y agoOk, that was weird. Here's some info for others who were thinking WTF? https://reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/ae04as/whats_up_with_john_mcafees_tweets_about_fucking/ https://reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/ae04as/whats_up_w...
- gitgud 6y agoSide-note; Anti-virus software is ironically quite invasive and can be harmful to your system. They bury themselves deep into the OS and often access undocumented kernel API's which can break the OS. In some cases they [1] betray your privacy in the name of security... I guess it's still popular because it's often part of the bloatware on new PC's and Laptops... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20703699 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20703699
- peteretep 6y ago> I guess it's still popular because It’s still popular because, A) it largely prevents malware, B) some security policies mandate it
- gruez 6y ago>A) it largely prevents malware compared to what? nothing at all? nowadays there's windows defender which is free so any antivirus product that doesn't do noticeably better is probably junk.
- Beached 6y agodefender is an antivirus product. and yes AV largely prevents malware compared to nothing. defender is a damn good one, but doesn't meet enterprise needs. central administration and logging are nessecary when managing a fleet of tens of thousands of workstations. AV isn't perfect, partial prevention is more common than people think, partial prevention is also partial infection. I have seen countless incidents that started with their av product catching the malware half way through execution but they never knew because they don't receive central logs. defender ATP solves some of these issues, but osx and linux capabilities are meh at best, and still very new. (linux at least) so still not ready for most enterprises. third party av exists because enterprises need centralized av across multiple OS that works ok. no one is fooling themselves thinking av prevents all malware, but it prevents a lot, and more importantly allows you to get visibility into your endpoints activities so a human can be alerted to what needs to be investigated further. just because an av solution doesn't prevent things as much as others, doesn't make it completely useless, many many enterprises knowingly trade prevention and or performance for visibility, and cost, and that's ok.
- WarOnPrivacy 6y agoIt's been 20 years since I vowed to uninstall McAfee (& Symantec) software from every computer I could. I've been pretty consistent at keeping that promise. Probably 1k+ uninstalls.
- burntoutfire 6y agoWatch out for hitmen...
- WorldPeas 6y agoI worked at a helpdesk for a bit and made this a personal goal too. It actually increased business because people told me "their computer wasn't loud anymore". It's amazing what just removing some software and putting in better ram will do.
- a5withtrrs 6y agoI work in security and let me explain why McAfee products are so commonplace in corporate environments, even when there are vastly better alternatives out there. You want an AV product? Done You want a firewall product? Done You want central management? Done You want SIEM? Done etc etc Are any of their products amazing compared to the alternatives? No! Do they integrate seamlessly with each other? No! Are they cheaper than alternatives? Probably not! But. They provide a solution for every checkbox. And it's easy to convince management and auditors that you have done 'the right thing' by using a well known brand. And this in turn gets pass marks from the auditors. A specific note about integration between products, McAfee has a history of buying good security software companies and basically destroying them. The integrations usually 'barely work' and after enough people complain and the original core devs have packed up and left, they basically scuttle the product. Remember when 'Foundstone' was a vulnerability scanner that was an actual alternative to Nessus and not the consulting arm of McAfee? I do and I'm still sad they gutted it.
- swiley 6y agoI worked at a large American defense (blob? I don't know what the correct business term is) that put every damn McAfee product (all kinds of zany things I had never even heard of) on everyone's computers. One particularly bad piece of software would intercept filesystem syscalls and I guess generate hashes from the data to do some sort of scan? Whatever it did made hg and the build tools almost unusable. For years everyone that was a member of the "engineering" group on the network was exempt but I guess someone realized managers were part of that and you had jump through administrative hoops to get temporary exemptions. We had these amazing machines. I think the laptop I had might have been nearly as powerful as the desktop I just built, but my 10 year old thinkpad could consistently outperform them thanks to McAfee.
- WorldPeas 6y agoI believe the term you're probably looking for is conglomerate
- GordonS 6y agoI work in the enterprise space, and Mcafee is the AV I see the most, and I believe largely for the "checkbox compliance" reasons you mentioned. Personally, I find Mcafee AV to be absolutely fucking horrible. It installs something like 10 Windows services, and runs about 15 processes, and it always consumes by far more CPU than anything else on my system - and I run Docker, Rider, etc, so actually put the system through it's paces. As an aside, I'm currently working with a company that was recently hit by a randsomware attack. They have responded by installing two endpoint protection (aka next gen AV) systems, another DLP system (Mcafee DLP is already installed), and a kill switch that let's them remotely destroy a machine. The end result is that a machine that was previously severely degraded by Mcafee, is now a machine that is at times unusable, and permanently sounds like an aircraft taking off. I don't think they're even done - I'm pretty sure they're going to install more crapware! This BTW is a company that sends about 10 internal spam mails a day, many of which are images or/and full of spelling mistakes, and some of which are asking you to download and install .exe files...
- sjg007 6y agoCyber security is a complicated profession
- IronWolve 6y agoMany wireless carriers preload mcafee on android for free with updates. Who even knows if it catches bad android apps.
- revel 6y agoGot to wonder what the ratio will be for cocaine purchased per share. This IPO looks like it's headed for the Guinness Book of World Records, but I'd be curious to see how it stacks up with other IPOs. My bet is Uber is the overall #1, but if there's one individual who could singlehandedly shoot McAfee to the top, it's John McAffee. Less a man than a black hole for cocaine and prostitution, he's going to be pushing those numbers to new records. The only exception to this is perhaps post-Grimes Elon Musk. Not sure to what extent those 2 are stimulating the economy but they're certainly stimulating the economy for stimulants. On the other hand you have everyone else working at, what is by all accounts, a mature firm staffed with nerds working in a quiet sector. At any rate, exciting news and I wish them the very best of luck.
- syspec 6y agoBut... he sold the company in 1994?
- ksec 6y agoWhy on earth did Intel acquire McAfee in the first place is still a mystery to me. And I dont know how many times it has changed hand since, and now we are back to IPO. I actually think Oracle would be a better fit for McAfee given their enterprise nature.
- Traster 6y agoThe acquired them in the first place because they thought Security was the future. It was their big bet they could grow it synergistically to the core business while at the same time the market would wake up to security as important. The problem was that we moved to the cloud where cloud providers produced their own solutions, Microsoft woke up to security as well and it turns out security is really a part of the operating system- and Apple and Google figured that out on mobile. The nail in the coffin in my opinion was the fact that McAfee didn’t have the right security expertise- they had no influence on chip design, they were basically strong in corporate sales, which is something Intel already knew how to do and was useless on mobile. So it was just another case of Intel overpaying for something, letting it wilt in the shadow of x86 and then finally getting rid of it. It’s not actually changed hands since Intel, Intel spun it out, retaining 49% ownership with TPG taking majority ownership with basically exactly thus plan - cut back the wasted investment Intel had made, make it lean and dump it on the stock market before anyone gets wise.
- russellbeattie 6y agoWait, again? I had a friend who worked there the first time during the dot-com boom like 20 years ago. Crazy.