McAfee will pay $51 million in cash now, then as well as $24 million if financial performance targets are met. ScanAlert currently provides security services for 8,000 customers across 75,000 Web sites, with the Hacker Safe brand appearing on the sites. The acquisition will spread McAfee offerings into the e-commerce market. To be certified a web site undergo a security audit which includes scans for vulnerabilities and verification of security fixes. What's the point ? This ensures that consumers are protected when they've submitted personal and/or financial data. To maintain certification, a web site passes daily scans. The company claims that the certification boosts consumer confidence, and can result in increased sales.

"Consumers are expected to spend nearly $160 billion this year on products and services online, providing personal credit card information to e-commerce websites, many of which have traditionally been under-protected,” said Dave DeWalt, McAfee President and Chief Executive Officer.

As soon as the deal is closed - should be in McAfee's first quarter of next year - ScanAlert will be integrated into the Web Security Group, and will be led cooperatively by Ken Leonard, ScanAlert chief executive officer, and Tim Dowling, a McAfee vice president. The technology itself should be integrated into the SiteAdvisor service (which came from an acquisition in april 2006), which alerts web users about the safety of a site: if it infects viewers computers with malware, sends spam using submitted addresses, displays too many pop-up ads.