Security software vendor McAfee is strengthening its Intel collaboration to drive a security framework that is comprised of layers of hardware and software security to protect governments and organisations from critical infrastructure attacks.

Brian Contos, McAfee’s senior director for emerging markets, says the emergence of new cyber threats means traditional IT security has become null and void.

McAfee recently acquired Nitro Security to mitigate attacks and drive dynamic white listing in order to prevent advanced security attacks. In addition, Contos notes, the company is partnering with other security companies to drive global security intelligence and solutions.

“Intel bought McAfee for $70 million, which was one of the biggest security acquisitions in history. This was part of a strategy to embed McAfee Deep Safe security within the CPU chip itself,” Contos explains.

McAfee earlier this year conducted a study with the Security Defence Agenda, a think tank in the US, and found that 56% of cyber security experts believe the next arms race will be in cyber space. “Around 45% believe cyber security is just as important as border security.

While 36% believe cyber security is more important than missile defence, and 43% identify damage or disruption to critical infrastructure as the greatest single cyber threat,” says Contos.

In light of this, McAfee has created a large partner ecosystem to create a single solution that combines hardware, software, services and frameworks to prevent attacks on critical infrastructure.

According to McAfee, the solution consists of five parts. The first is McAfee’s security management tool, which monitors and reports on security, risk and compliance projects. The second is the network security platform, which combines real-time threat awareness, next-generation network intrusion prevision, firewall and network access control.

The third part is McAfee information security, a behavioural-based gateway that focuses on data loss prevention, encryption, Web security, and identity and access management. The McAfee endpoint security platform provides application white listing, virtual server and desktop security, endpoint network access control, and host intrusion prevention. Lastly, McAfee says it uses global threat intelligence that detects network connection reputation as well as file and Web reputation.