McAfee releases Falcon betas

McAfee encouraged the public to test two new services before the final late-summer product launch of Falcon, which is McAfee’s answer to Microsoft’s already-launched Live OneCare service and Symantec’s soon-to-be-released Norton 360.

The first service available beta is for McAfee Total Protection, the premium Falcon-based service offered by the company. It includes virus protection, spyware removal, spam and phishing protection and extra security defenses for wireless networked computers.

The second beta offering is for a more basic service called McAfee VirusScan Plus. Like Total Protection, VirusScan is a consumer service offering virus and spyware protection, but it will not include the same level of additional security bells and whistles.

McAfee is choosing avoid the one-size-fits all tactic used by both Microsoft with OneCare and Symantec with Norton 360 by offering different levels of protection in its next generation of protection products.