Security vendor McAfee has announced McAfee Endpoint Protection for Mac, a unified suite of security features that can be managed from a central console. The product is intended to address the security needs of the growing number of Macintoshes in businesses.According to McAfee, most Mac-based businesses are just using individual desktop-oriented antivirus protection (if anything). But in the words of the product's data sheet (PDF), "when Macs were rare in the business world (outside of design studios and creative agencies), [security] wasn't an issue. But with the growing market share of the Mac platform and the need for organizations to demonstrate 100 percent compliance with security requirements, protecting your business means protecting the Mac endpoints of your end users." (The sheet includes a graph showing Mac marketshare rising from 3.25 percent in 2004 to 8.0 percent last year.)

McAfee Endpoint Protection for Mac includes anti-spyware and antivirus protection, plus both inbound and outbound firewalls. It also can prevent unauthorized applications from running and block the modification of existing applications.

But what should make it particularly useful for SMBs is that it enables the management of endpoint security on both Macs and PCs from a single station. The system lets an administrator determine which applications are authorized to run on each Mac endpoint and to impose security restrictions across the board. It also works with McAfee's ePolicy Orchestrator, a security management platform for Windows PCs, to enable mixed-platform businesses to enforce company security policies across the board.

McAfee Endpoint Protection for Mac works with Snow Leopard, Leopard, or Tiger and on both Intel and PowerPC Macs. A McAfee representative told CNet that the product would run about $55 per computer for a 500-1,000-computer network.

Don't Miss: Mac Security A Myth? Really?