Sometimes a company's name is so close to what it does that it can be a distraction. This is certainly true of Secure Computing (Secure) that aims to provide its customers with, well—secure computing. The trouble is that the same is true of its competitors—even where their names don't reflect this quite as well. That problem is about to disappear as it was announced Secure is being taken over by McAfee, subject to the usual round of approvals prior to completion.

McAfee, an obscure Celtic surname, means nothing much in general terms, but of course in the world of information security it means just one thing, the world's largest specialist provider of IT security products—a position McAfee says was ceded by its larger rival Symantec when it scaled out its core business in 2004 by acquiring storage software giant Veritas.

McAfee has made many acquisitions in the past few years. These have been mostly smaller organisations to fill gaps in its portfolio, including: IntruShield (2003) for intrusion prevention; Foundstone (2004) for vulnerability management; Preventsys (2006) and Citadel (2006) for risk management; SafeBoot for endpoint security (2007); ScanAlert for web security (2007); and Reconnex for DLP (2008).

Secure fills some of the major remaining gaps in the McAfee portfolio, especially around web security (SmartFilter), email security (CipherTrust, itself acquired by Secure in 2006), authentication (SafeWord) and firewalls (SideWinder). Digesting the whole secure product range will take a bit longer than other recent acquisitions, but such consumption is clearly an ongoing process for McAfee.

Few gaps remain in McAfee's IT security portfolio now, its main challenge will be making sure buyers know what is has and where. Another problem is going to be cross-selling to its customer base, most of whom will have many of the missing components that Secure brings to the party but from one of McAfee's competitors. There will be little short-term motivation to change and much of this existing protection will come from infrastructure providers such as Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Symantec and EMC that all now have major security divisions.

For existing customers of both McAfee and Secure, the question will be how the news and consolidation that must ensue will affect existing product plans. McAfee must provide early clarity and assurance around ongoing development and support. McAfee says it will keep Secure as a separate sales channel—it may well do in the short term, but longer term it will need to integrate and rationalise its operations to achieve the benefits shareholders will expect from the acquisition.

This rationalisation will need to happen within McAfee, but more importantly across its sales channel. During the process it needs to maintain the most credible sales staff and resellers and send them out saying "McAfee" hoping to inspire in users a brand of secure computing that McAfee believes it can deliver across the operations of business of all sizes.