It was big news when chip giant Intel bought security firm McAfee for $7.7 billion this year, raising hopes for better hardware-based security solutions.

Intel has now announced its first product from the combined entity, DeepSafe. The benefit here is that now Intel has an internal mechanism to take advantage of the security features it has built into its chips. In the past, it's fair to say that software developers were sometimes slow to take full advantage of all that was available at the chip level.

The idea, according to Dow Jones, isn't to build security features directly into microprocessors, but rather continue to support software that accesses these features in a "hardware-assisted" approach. It remains to be seen whether this is a true breakthrough in the corporate fight against malware, advanced persistent threats and the like. But it seems like the approach will be able to work a lot closer to the operating system to root out illicit software. The specifications will be forthcoming soon.

Intel has indicated that the enterprise market will be its initial focus, followed by the consumer PC market. What about other devices? Intel has also announced that it has inked a deal with Google to provide chips that power Android devices. Intel has struggled to break into the mobile market, but if it can someday get this sort of security functionality into Android phones and tablets, it will have a wonderful marketing story. That won't happen anytime soon, however.

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