McAfee Inc, the second largest security software maker, seems to be working hard on inching closer to its bigger competitor Symantec. Last quarter, it gave huge discounts to sign several large deals. Business in Asia Pacific is logging into big deals too, says McAfee Asia Pacific president, Steve Redman. Prior to joining McAfee last year, Redman spent eight years at storage company EMC. He seems confident that Indian IT users are well plugged into the global security landscape. In a candid chat with Pragati Verma, he describes the changing threat landscape for enterprises, consumers and governments. Excerpts:

You have met CIOs of several Indian companies. Are their concerns and priorities in line with security landscape globally?

Australia and India are our shining lights. Maturity level is pretty high in Indian telcos and banks. Indian CIOs are thinking of compliance, SOX and prioritising risk. India is as mature as Australia. In my opinion, the biggest issues facing a CIO today are intellectual property and data loss.

When you lose a USB stick, the stick is worth $10 but the data could be worth millions or billions of dollars. Similarly, several laptops are lost every year. Data encryption is becoming very important. CIO?s worries today are not related to security at the end point, but at the weakest points in network.

Managing vulnerabilities is a big headache for him.

In China, for instance, you don?t find similar respect for intellectual property. Windows 7 is launched in China much before Microsoft launches it. China is still like an emerging market in security issues. They think national when it comes to security deployment, while security threats are global. You need to have products with an international exposure.

Which are the biggest Web threats to consumers today?

Virus, spyware and malware are huge. Then, we are seeing a series of denial-of-service attacks. Unprotected home machines are a big threat here. These systems may be infected and controlled by outsiders as part of their botnets and are used to send spam and steal home users? information.

The second quarter saw nearly 12 million zombies come into service. The US alone produced about 2.1 million zombies. Social networking sites also present a distinct set of threats.

Mobile phones are beginning to grow ubiquitous, but seem to be devoid of security software?

There are as many threats on a mobile phone as any computer. You have got to protect it nicely. Encryption on your data card is also important. You can get good encryption on, say, a Blackberry. But it is not good for voice communications. What you need is a good user experience even as the device is secured. Things are changing and next year, you will see much more protection for devices like phones.

Is security market finally succumbing to slowdown? Symantec had a bad quarter and you also announced some big-ticket discounting.

We had a good quarter. Market also seemed to think it was a good set of numbers. We managed double digit revenue growth when our competitors were hit by declining revenues and profits. We did offer discount but our deal size went up drastically. We saw 40-50% increase in deal size. And these kinds of deals ask for some discounts.

If discounts are driven by big deals, it is a good sign. In Asia, we had never closed a million dollar deal.

We had three of them last quarter. Clearly, we are getting into million dollar and multi-million dollar deals. There were several positive signs last quarter. As we grow from a desktop security product company to a bigger company with a suite of products and services, we are expecting to see more such big deals.

Your CEO Dave Dewalt says he wants to undo Symantec?s longstanding, exclusive anti-virus distribution relationship with HP. What makes you so confident?

I?d say, good pick-up! We have already entered into a relationship with HP for their small medium business. We have also tied up for networking equipment. It is a positive sign. We are very aggressive on HP. We have already tied up with Dell, Lenovo and Acer. These OEM relationships are very crucial to make a dent in the consumer market. Our products make us confident.

Another distributing threat is emergence of cyberwars? Do you engage with any governments on the same?

Yes, but these are sensitive matters and I can?t give details. While governments are worried about security just like an enterprise, they also need to defend homeland in cyberspace.

Cybercrime is a growing problem that negatively impacts everybody. While a lot has been done to combat cybercrime over the past decade, criminals still have a upper hand. Some experts have argued that a cyberattack could be more economically devastating than the physical attacks. In my opinion, wars will be fought in a different domain ten years from now. Future wars will not be fought on a physical battleground, but in cyberspace.

Our recent reports show that cybercrime isn?t yet enough of a priority for governments around the world to allow the fight against it to make real headway worldwide. Added to that, the physical threat of terrorism and economic collapse is diverting political attention elsewhere. In contrast, cybercriminals are sharpening their focus.

Recession is a fertile ground for criminal activity as fraudsters clamour to capitalise on rising use of the internet and the climate of fear and anxiety. Secondly, cross border law enforcement remains a long-standing hurdle to fighting cybercrime.

While there has been progress, there is still a significant lack of training and understanding in digital forensics and evidence collection as well as in the law courts around the world.