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Corporate Citizenship: Customers
At McAfee, our focus is our customers, whether they are consumers at home, schools, small businesses, governments, service providers, or the largest global enterprises. Underlying this focus is our commitment to deliver world-class products and support. Not only is this good business, it underscores our commitment to good corporate citizenship. We treat our customers with the highest regard—trust is essential for a company that provides critical security services. We also commit to protecting our customers’ privacy, just as we commit to protecting their systems and applications.
Our Goal
World-class quality in all McAfee products, services, and support; ensure the protection of our customers’ privacy
Performance Highlights
Commitment: Deliver highest quality products and services.
McAfee believes in delivering the highest quality products and services. Throughout our product development process, we establish and measure our software and appliances against pre-defined quality standards, ensuring consistently high standards in the products we release.
The McAfee approach to developing high quality products begins with the skills of our engineering teams. Our training programs enhance the skills of our development and quality assurance engineers. In many cases, our engineers enhance their training with professional certifications.
Our Product Lifecycle Guideline (PLG) defines our software development process. The PLG incorporates several of the processes from higher levels of the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) into our development environment, such as in the areas of project planning, work product, and in-process inspections, and quality planning and tracking. This framework supports the individual teams using the specific development methodology most appropriate to their current project.
Further enhancing our commitment to quality, our project teams use an iterative development methodology with significant customer collaboration throughout the process. We incorporate our customers at early stages through the Joint Development Partner (JDP) program and at later stages through extensive beta-test programs. Through the JDP program, McAfee works closely with a small set of customers throughout multiple stages, beginning at requirements definition, continuing through validation of incremental feature “drops,” and culminating with an onsite visit by 10-12 JDP and beta partners. Customer participation is a key component of our quality success.
Finally, McAfee internal testing activities occur at all stages of a product’s development. These tests range from the unit and integration tests performed by the developers to the various types of system tests that the quality assurance teams perform. We use different testing labs to support the different types of system testing, including Live Virus, Scalability, and general purpose test labs.
McAfee routinely receives recognition for our product capabilities and product quality. Customers, industry analysts, media, and security experts regularly recognize McAfee products with formal awards, positive reviews, and general feedback. McAfee engineers and quality assurance experts are routinely invited to speak at industry conferences and events, in recognition of our position as leaders in product innovation and quality.
Commitment: Serve as a trusted security advisor to our partners and customers, quickly responding to and resolving issues.
We strive to be recognized as trusted security advisors to our partners and customers worldwide. Our commitment is to deliver world-class support for all customers. The McAfee Worldwide Technical Support and Customer Service team—the backbone of our support effort— operates around the clock worldwide.
We have a holistic approach to customer support. First we have extremely high expectations for how we provide support. This includes commitments to timely and solid technical advice given by a team of security experts with leading industry certifications (e.g., CompTIA, CISSP). Second, we offer our customers flexibility as to how they receive customer support—whether online, on the phone, through e-mail, or other options. This includes the McAfee ServicePortal, a comprehensive Web site that provides tools for self-help, including product updates, downloads, patches, FAQs, our KnowledgeBase, online case tracking, alerts, and technical support contact information. Finally, we continuously measure our performance through self-assessments and customer surveys, and we take specific actions to improve performance when necessary.
Our commitment to support our customers goes beyond our doors. In an effort to enhance the quality of the service and support delivered by companies across sectors, McAfee participated in a joint effort of the Service and Support Professionals Association and J.D. Power and Associates to establish the criteria behind the J.D. Power and Associates Certified Technology Service and Support Certification program. By sharing our collective expertise, McAfee has elevated the quality of service and customer support expected of our industry.
Our performance—delivering support and customer service—has been recognized by others. Our customer support online system—McAfee ServicePortal—was a recent winner of the KM Reality Award. This recognition, awarded by KMWorld, celebrated our leadership in the implementation of knowledge management practices and processes.
Commitment: Protect the privacy of our customers.
As a trusted security provider, we understand the importance of protecting important information. Every day, we provide the essential technology that protects financial transactions, customer databases, trade secrets, business strategies, intellectual property, and other critical assets. We understand the importance of protecting personal information. That is why McAfee is committed to protecting the privacy of our consumer, government, education, and business customers.
McAfee has a comprehensive privacy program. Through our Privacy Program Office, we develop policies and practices that meet or exceed industry standards. We believe in the principles of transparency, choice, and consent, and, as such, we disclose our policy and practices in our general Privacy Policy Statement. As a leading security provider, we also understand that you cannot have privacy without security. Throughout the company, McAfee uses state-of-the-art security technology and leading best practices to protect our customer data.
For our home users, we understand concerns around sharing personal information. At McAfee, we have responded with an additional approach: our Consumer Privacy Policy. McAfee for Home Users is a licensee of the TRUSTe Privacy Program. TRUSTe is an independent, nonprofit organization whose mission is to build users’ trust and confidence in the Internet by promoting the use of fair information practices. Because we aim to demonstrate our commitment to privacy through transparency, we publicly disclose our information practices and have our privacy practices reviewed for compliance by TRUSTe. In addition, McAfee for Home Users complies with the European Union Safe Harbor framework as set forth by the US Department of Commerce regarding the collection, use, and retention of data from the European Union.
Awards & Recognition
2006 Product of the Year: Intrusion Prevention—Information Security Magazine
2006 Product of the Year: Vulnerability Management—Information Security Magazine
2005 Best Software Product—CompTIA Breakaway Conference
2006 Best Enterprise Security Solution finalist, SIIA Codie Awards
Most Valued Security Vendor—CIO Insight survey of IT executives
Best International Support Web Site—Localization Standards Association and Association of Support Professionals
KM Reality Award: McAfee ServicePortal
