Computer software giant McAfee has just announced that it plans to launch an online support community.

It will enable McAfee customers to interact with other users to resolve issues, share best practices, and discuss emerging trends. And it has brought in a leader in social business software, Jive Software, to develop and host the new community space.

Barry McPherson, executive vice president of worldwide support and services at McAfee, said:
“Sharing information among peers is an increasing preference for our customers and an integral part of our social media strategy. The new support community will enable us to evolve beyond traditional phone and email based services and focus more on collaboration with our customers through discussions, blogs, wikis, user groups and community polling. The community will tie into our social media presence elsewhere on the Web where customer activity is increasing, and provide a hub with the tools to make conversations easier.”

The McAfee online support community will launch in the final months of 2009 and the company hope it will increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, retain and reuse knowledge and enable customers to share experiences that may help others. Furthermore, McAfee believes that its technicians, developers and product managers will be able to engage customers in new ways to enhance products and improve processes.

The new McAfee online community site will run on Jive’s Social Business Software platform (SBS).

As part of its listening and response system, McAfee is already monitoring top social sites Twitter and Facebook.

Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, US, McAfee is the world’s largest dedicated security technology company. It states that it is committed to relentlessly tackling the world’s toughest security challenges. McAfee’s strategy is to deliver proactive and proven solutions and services that help secure systems and networks around the world, allowing users to safely connect to the internet, browse and shop the Web more securely. And McAfee develops products that are designed to help home users, businesses, the public sector and service providers. It enables them to prove compliance with regulations, protect data, prevent disruptions, identify vulnerabilities, and continuously monitor and improve their security.

Guest Article by Neil Camp

A new unlimited capacity online backup service has been launched by dedicated security company McAfee.

Called McAfee Online Backup, it offers a new secure online service that stores and encrypts digital assets such as photos, videos, music, e-mails and other files.

And McAfee says that recent research proves that such a service – one that is secure, automated and simple to use – is needed. It was revealed that:

• every week 140,000 hard drives will crash in the United States (according to Google Labs);
• every week 12,000 laptops are lost or stolen in U.S. airports (according to Dell & Ponemon Institute LLC);
• 70% of data losses are due to events beyond user control (according to a study by Pepperdine University);
• U.S. consumers own, on average, nearly 1,800 digital files each, yet more than half (52%) don’t backup their data for various reasons, mainly because they don’t know how, believe it takes too much time, or don’t have the tools needed to backup (according to the Consumer Electronics Association).

One of the biggest plus points with the new service is that it is based upon offering unlimited capacity, which means that consumers do not need to remember when to back up files, or decide which files are important to backup and which are not. And a secure server online ensures all of their precious files remain safe in the event something happens to their computer.

Other benefits include safe and secure online backup. In case of a catastrophe, or device failure, users’ files are safely encrypted and stored on a secure remote server online and are easily retrievable with just a few clicks.

Furthermore, it’s easy setup for automatic backup. After what McAfee claim is a simple installation, the backup process is completely automatic and will happen in the background at regular intervals. This can also be customized by the consumer.

Brent Remai, vice president of consumer marketing at McAfee, said:
“The McAfee Online Backup service addresses many of consumers’ concerns about safely and easily storing their important files with unlimited storage capacity. It completely eliminates the hassle of backup: set-up takes just a few easy steps, and then the service securely backs up files automatically at regular intervals, It’s the perfect solution for anyone with a PC, but specifically the member of the family who manages the family’s digital photos, videos, music and other files. They no longer need to worry about disk failure, file corruption or other disasters such as home theft or fires.”

McAfee Online Backup comes on stream in the last quarter of the year in the following countries:

• Canada
• UK
• Australia
• Japan
• China
• Taiwan
• Mexico
• Brazil
• Germany
• France
• Spain
• Netherlands
• Italy
• Portugal
• Norway
• Denmark
• Sweden
• Finland
• Russia
• Poland
• Czech Republic
• Turkey
• Greece
• Hungary
• Serbia
• Croatia
• Korea.

The new Online Backup works with McAfee’s consumer security suites such as McAfee VirusScan Plus, McAfee Internet Security and McAfee Total Protection. It also works with other security products from other vendors.

Guest Article by Neil Camp