On Monday, Adobe and McAfee revealed that they have joined hands in order to provide a combined data-loss-prevention and DRM solution targeted at businesses and enterprises.

The combined solution will assign access controls to critical documents, after characterizing them. Both the steps would be based on policies. Both will function as new tools in order to avoid confidential documents from being emailed outside the company.

The aim of this move is to eradicate data breaches and their disastrous costs. "In 2008, there was approximately $3.15 billion of latent demand by businesses in the United States for technology and software to protect unstructured data, a term which Ponemon uses for random files stored on a variety of media," estimates the Ponemon Institute. 
Meanwhile, McAfee has also come up with a free diagnostic tool, dubbed McAfee Security Scan, which will be available as an optional download to customers when installing Adobe Reader and Adobe Flash Player software from Adobe.com. The user will be provided special discounts on McAfee security software, upon completion. 

The McAfee's Security conference, FOCUS 09, to be held from Oct. 6-9 in Las Vegas, will see representatives from both companies interacting with each other.

A software bundle for K-12 educators and students was also announced by Adobe, which includes Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 and Adobe Premiere Elements 8, plus Adobe Contribute CS4, Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro and Adobe Soundbooth CS4, all for a volume discount of $149.