In November, Symantec officially renamed itself NortonLifeLock, but the name change may be short-lived as McAfee is thought to be considering acquiring its rival.

As The Wall Street Journal reports, NortonLifeLock focuses on consumer and small business security products, including identity protection and privacy solutions offered under the LifeLock brand. McAfee on the other hand, offers both consumer and enterprise solutions, but is currently focused on the more traditional security suite for the consumer market.

McAfee, which still counts Intel as one of its owners, isn't alone in considering a NortonLifeLock acquisition. Private equity firms Permira and Advent are also interested in the company and already had bids rejected when Symantec was in the middle of selling its enterprise business and brand to Broadcom. Broadcom also wanted all of Symantec, but failed to acquire the consumer side.

The Broadcom deal was worth $10.7 billion and today NortonLifeLock is a $16 billion company. If an acquisition deal is on the cards, it's very unlikely to even be considered before the end of the year due to half of NotronLifeLock's 12 directors planning to leave following the Dec. 19 annual meeting.

If McAfee does succeed in acquiring NortonLifeLock, it seems likely consumer choice on the market would be diminished. McAfee would integrate the LifeLock identity protection and monitoring services into its existing Total Protection suite, making it unclear what would happen to the competing Norton 360 products.

In our latest round-up of the best security suites, Norton 360 Deluxe and Norton 360 with LifeLock Select both scored higher than McAfee Total Protection. One of the negatives points highlighted in the Total Protection review was identity theft remediation no longer including reimbursement, where as Norton 360 with LifeLock is much more supportive and will reimburse you for up to $25,000 in stolen funds, and $25,000 in personal expenses directly related to identity theft.

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