Another EMC defection

McAfee has announced that Dave DeWalt, EMC Corp.’s current head of customer relations, will become its new CEO, effective April 2. DeWalt is replacing George Samenuk, who was forced to step down in October because of a stock options investigation that means McAfee has had to restate 10 years worth of results. “I have to restore the image of McAfee,” DeWalt is quoted as saying about the transition.

The move is reminiscent of former EMC CTO George Symons’ move to Yosemite Technologies in October. We suppose it’s only natural for execs who have come up the ranks at a big company like EMC to branch out later in their careers, but we also wonder if it’s coincidence that Symons’ defection to a separate SMB backup company preceded the apparent death of EMC Retrospect by just a few months.

Meanwhile, MarketWatch reports that Symantec execs are promising more acquisitions to come. Enrique Salem, Symantec’s group president of consumer products and solutions, wouldn’t even rule out another billion-dollar deal at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference in San Francisco. Wondering how Symantec customers feel about that…

Anyway, signing off for now–someone from a big company could be spying on us, after all.