McAfee axes 250 jobs

SECURITY VENDOR McAfee has axed 250 of its employees as it attempts to become more efficient under Intel.

"In order to better prepare the company for growth in 2012 we have made the difficult decision to reduce a small percentage of our global workforce," Ian Bain, a spokesperson for McAfee, told Reuters.

The 250 jobs make up only three per cent of the company's total workforce, but it still shows that McAfee is not currently operating efficiently, which might cause some jitters for investors.

McAfee said that the cuts are being made in non-key areas. It is not clear what these areas are, but it seems that McAfee is narrowing its overall security focus.

Chip giant Intel bought McAfee for $7.7bn last year to enhance the security of its processors. The acquisition sent McAfee shares soaring nearly 60 per cent, but it appears to have done little to stop job losses.

Despite the fact that Intel now owns the company, Intel said that the decision to lay off the workers was made by McAfee management, not Intel. It is hard to imagine that there was no consultation with Intel about this, but McAfee appears to maintain much of its autonomy.

Regardless of who made the decision, the move is likely a result of Intel's acquisition. Enrique Salem, CEO of Symantec, told analysts in October that the acquisition had caused obvious disruption at McAfee, which was in turn helping Symantec's business.

McAfee also named Stuart McClure as its new CTO, replacing George Kurtz. McClure was previously McAfee's SVP and has worked with the company since 2004. µ