The acquisition of McAfee by Intel makes a very important statement when you view it in the context of the future of network security. It’s one of the big AV companies that have been around since the birth of malware, and it competes well against market leader Symantec. For people who think computer security is really just about this topic, the acquisition of McAfee by Intel doesn’t make a lot of sense. If that’s all Intel wanted, it could simply license it. But what most analysts are missing is that there’s a huge, and rapidly growing, universe of network-connected devices that are quite simply unprotected: a wide range of products from network-connected printers to Internet-aware security systems in buildings.