Here at McAfee we understand how weak consumer confidence in web transactions can affect legitimate online businesses. Research tells us that 70 percent of shopping carts are now abandoned before checkout because of security concerns. This is extremely frustrating for legitimate online businesses. Imagine if you had a brick-and-mortar store, and 70 percent of your customers brought merchandise to the counter and then walked away!

That’s why we developed our new McAfee Secure trustmark, which will allow ebusinesses to assure potential customers of the security of their site, leading to higher traffic and a potential increase in sales.

The McAfee Secure trustmark is not just another meaningless badge; sites that sign up for McAfee Secure undergo rigorous security testing and regular monitoring. Web sites can change daily, which means there’s the possibility of new vulnerabilities each day. Our trustmark accounts for these changes by performing daily scans of content and links. We also do longer-term tests to determine the site's email practices and help site owner's correct inadvertent mistakes.

What’s more, McAfee Secure ensures Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance, letting customers know that your credit card payment system is secure.

McAfee Secure is a proactive measure that lets legitimate businesses distinguish themselves from the criminals. Because let's face it, cyber crooks have gotten so sophisticated that it's almost impossible to tell which sites are authentic businesses and which are decoys just by looking at them. It's no wonder that consumers are leery of making purchases online.

We are pleased to give legitimate businesses a tool for restoring consumer confidence, but our trustmark is not the only part of the equation. We also need to empower Internet users to immediately identify which sites are secure and which are not. So, later this summer, we will release McAfee Secure Search, allowing Internet surfers to see which sites are dangerous and which are guaranteed McAfee Secure right in their search results.

McAfee Secure Search will be integrated into our free McAfee SiteAdvisor™ toolbar, which has already been downloaded more than 135 million times. SiteAdvisor displays green, yellow and red ratings in search results to indicate whether a site is safe, risky or if the user should exercise caution. Now, with Secure Search, SiteAdvisor users will also be able to see which sites have been certified with the McAfee Secure trustmark. The McAfee Secure icon will appear right next to the site listing, and users will be able to filter out sites that earn a red alert.

The McAfee Secure trustmark and Secure Search tools will bring a new and needed transparency to the search process. We believe that this integration is crucial since research tells us that four out of five web site visits start with search.

To further boost transparency, we've partnered with Yahoo, Inc. to integrate our secure search technology with Yahoo Search. Yahoo recently launched a beta of its new SearchScan feature, using the McAfee SiteAdvisor technology to alert users of risky sites. Yahoo SearchScan identifies sites that contain spyware, adware and other malicious software, as well as sites with poor email practices.

We are excited about our partnership with Yahoo and hope to see more secure search features in the future. We believe that certified site security at the search level is the next step in restoring consumer confidence in web transactions. The McAfee Secure trustmark is good for consumers, and it's great for online businesses. Hopefully, with our help, ebusinesses can win back the revenue they've been losing in those abandoned shopping carts.