McAfee, Inc. announced they have entered into an agreement to acquire the privately owned tenCube, developer of WaveSecure, one of the winners of ADC2. McAfee is expanding its abilities in the mobile space with the acquisition, and they intend to leverage this as a single platform from consumer to enterprise for device management and security. McAfee’s Todd Gebhart had this to say about the deal:

“There has been a tremendous amount of innovation in the past year with smartphones and other mobile devices, which really puts McAfee at a tipping point. With our more than 20 years of expertise in securing the endpoint, nearly a decade of experience securing mobile devices and a vast partner ecosystem, we are well positioned to out innovate and deliver the broadest mobile platform available.”

McAfee points out that people are much more likely to lose their phone than their laptop. Losing ones phone these days isn’t just a matter of inconvenience, it’s a matter of personal privacy, and the privacy of one’s contacts as well. The rise in mobile commerce and increasing access to banking and sensitive information on phones makes security much more important.

McAfee expects to benefit from the acquisition in several ways:

Further establish itself as the leader in mobile security with the most complete set of mobile technologies—McAfee now has the technology needed for users and their families to locate, lock, encrypt, protect against malware, wipe, filter, manage, back-up, restore and access their data online

Leverage its expertise at the endpoint and in the cloud to broaden its existing mobile security portfolio beyond anti-malware, data protection, Web security and family protection

Expand the addressable device market with best-in-market mobile device platform support, including a wide range of mobile operating systems including Android, Blackberry, Symbian, Windows Mobile, iPhone and Java powered feature phones

Combine the skills and resources of both companies to develop and deliver scalable solutions through global partnerships with mobile service providers and mobile device manufacturers

Expand the breadth of its device management solutions available for enterprise IT administrators to implement policies, assist users and enforce compliance for mobile applications across the enterprise

While WaveSecure will undoubtedly benefit from the backing of a big player like McAfee, we also sometimes see great products languish after being acquired by a large corporation. Do you think this will ultimately be good or bad for WaveSecure?