The study also named McAfee the leader in the security vendor category with the most-improved score since 2003 in that category. The CIO Insight research study surveyed top IT executives and CIOs to measure their perception of the business value of their vendors' product and service offerings.

"McAfee made great strides both in the security category and the overall survey, rating higher than its competitors," said Ellen Pearlman, Editor in Chief, CIO Insight. "The company was consistently well rated across all of our criteria categories by the IT executives who responded to the survey."

The study surveyed around 900 US-based IT executives who were asked to rate vendors as "excellent", "good", "fair" or "poor" across seven key criteria. McAfee ranked in the top five across all seven criteria, including meeting expectations for ROI, increasing revenues, lowering costs, solving business problems and meeting quality expectations. McAfee was also among the handful with a customer loyalty rating exceeding 90 per cent.

"It is a great validation to be continually recognised by our customers and partners for our commitment to their success through innovative and reliable security solutions as well as industry best customer service," said Parveen Jain, executive vice president, McAfee Corporate Strategy, McAfee, Inc.