Essentially, McAfee’s Internet Security Suite 2006, VirusScan 2006 and Personal Firewall Plus 2006 products have been declared Skype certified. The McAfee Internet Security Suite 2006 will also carry the Skype certification mark on all retail packaging.
Skype chat and voice communications are already encrypted as part of the application, and will remain protected using Skype’s encryption technology. However, the two companies said the deal means that files sent using the Skype file transfer function will now go through a scanning process by the McAfee products.
We have over 113 million customers and we want our community to use their computers in the safest way possible, which includes having virus protection, said Skype’s chief security officer Kurt Sauer in a statement. Skype is already very secure, and McAfee’s products are complementary, securing the rest of the PC environment.
Skype says that its software is built upon a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and incorporates encryption technology that uses 256-bit AES, SHA-1 and RSA algorithms. Despite this, the rise of the popular VoIP client has led to security concerns in the industry, as customers install the package on company computers.
