On Tuesday, US security software company McAfee said it would reimburse home and home office users for any “reasonable expenses” incurred in the wake of its online antivirus-update-gone-wrong last week. It would also extend subscriptions by tw
On Tuesday, US security software company McAfee said it would reimburse home and home office users for any “reasonable expenses” incurred in the wake of its online antivirus-update-gone-wrong last week. It would also extend subscriptions by two years.
What should have been a routine update of virus signatures turned into a nightmare for many Windows XP users last Thursday, causing some PCs to crash, or falling into a cycle of endless restarts.
Today, McAfee has revealed its compensation for businesses hit by the duff update.
Not all will be happy.
Some, like TVNZ and the NZ Herald, had many of their computers offline for much of the day as their IT staff painstakingly restored systems, PC by PC.
But instead of home office users’ reimbursement for reasonable expenses, companies will receive a “customer commitment package tailored to their specific situation,” McAfee’s Asia Pacific CTO, Michael Sentonas, told NBR today.
Speaking from Sydney, Mr Sentonas said a package could include free support, or free access to a McAfee service that is usually paid, such has its automated security health-check service, which checks your IP address (or addresses) for vulnerabilities.
“Some companies had minor issues, some had major issues,” Mr Sentonas said, “so we’re tailoring it on a case-by-case basis.”
The CTO would not comment on any specific case.
NBR’s advice to any company that lost time and money has a result of the upgrade: speak up. It sounds as if the squeaky wheels will get the grease.
Mr Sentonas said McAfee was commissioning an independent review its quality assurance processes in the wake of the incident.
