“Customers are continually raising the bar on network security, while demanding less complexity in configuring and managing the solutions,” said Gil Shwed, Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Check Point Software Technologies, “We try to meet that challenge with our innovative software solutions, integrated appliances and leading customer support.”
Shwed’s business formula has paid off since he patented stateful packet inspection, founded Check Point and launched the world’s first commercial firewall in 1993. Based in Tel Aviv, Check Point is today a global IT security leader operating in 88 countries through a network of 2,200 certified partners. Present all over Asia Pacific, Check Point has strong business in Singapore, Japan, Australia and Hong Kong and made significant breakthroughs in China, Thailand and Vietnam.
Through its business partners, Check Point ensures effective and timely customer support in multiple languages. Strong customer focus is driving innovation in the company. “In 2008,customers told us they wanted more security and less complexity,” said Shwed. “They liked our security performance and our integrated solutions with centralized management because of their costeffectiveness and ease-of-use, but they didn’t want a “one-size-fits-all” solution. We found that all customers need different functionalities: some want to upgrade their firewall; others need secure VPNs while others are looking for anti-spam and website filtering. The challenge was to provide integrated security with flexible functions.”
Software blades: a flexible and simple solution
Check Point’s response to these customers came through its revolutionary ‘Software Blade architecture’ that offers a modular software security solution.
Customers can select the Software Blades that provide their desired security functions, tightly integrated on an appliance (see table 1). Software Blades can run either on ordinary servers or on Check Point’s appliances.
| Security Management Software Blades | |
| Firewall | Network Policy Management |
| IPsec VPN | Endpoint Policy Management |
| IPS | Logging & Status |
| Web Security | SmartWorkflow |
| URL Filtering | Monitoring |
| Antivirus & Anti-Malware | Management Portal |
| Anti-spam & Email Security | User Directory |
| Advanced Networking | IPS Event Analysis |
| Acceleration & Clustering | SmartProvisioning |
| Voice over IP (VoIP) | Reporting |
| Event Correlation |
Security Gateway appliances include the UTM-1™ range for low and mid-range users. Power-1™ is a range of models designed to maximize Security with Simplicity the Vision of Check Point in Asia Pacific Brought to you by security in multi-gigabit environments such as campuses or data
centres. IP Appliances enable customers to extend unified security architecture from the network centre out to branch offices.
VSX-1™ Appliances are virtualised security gateways that enable the creation of hundreds of security systems on a single hardware platform,consolidating infrastructure and cutting operational costs.
An appliance for Security Management, Smart-1™,supports central administration of both network and endpoint security and is available in four versions, supporting between 5 and 150 gateways, including a multi-domain management system (Provider-1).
All appliances have up to eight processing cores, to ensure the same high performance level for enterprises, ranging from SOHO start-ups to multinationals with large data centres and hundreds of branches.
“Our software blade solution means the appliances are extensible to new functions, automatically patched with code updates, scalable for increased traffic
Integrated endpoint security
On today’s networks, the use of laptops, notebooks, PDAs and other devices is developing much faster than fixed PCs. Supporting these numerous mobile devices with multiple layers of security is a huge burden for enterprises; they need a solid endpoint security solution. Laptops and other mobile devices require a firewall, antivirus, disk encryption, secure VPN, Network Access Control and web security application, all with central management.
Check Point’s single agent for endpoint security is deployed on all mobile devices and managed from a single console. The suite includes WebCheck, a powerful Web security agent. “Malware is targeting Web servers’ vulnerabilities and browsers pick up ‘drive-by’ infections,” said Shwed. "WebCheck is an innovative solution that allows the browser to run in a virtual environment, which shields the operating system from attacks such as registry changes. All this is completely transparent for the user.”
Another challenge enterprises have is to prevent confidential files from being accidentally dispatched to the wrong persons, through human error or delinquency. Check Point is currently working on a Data Leakage Prevention (DLP) solution that will provide the first automated security response to data leakage. “Current DLP solutions on the market today tend
to increase the administrative burden on IT staff,” said Shwed. “Check Point’s solution is meant to be simple to deploy and fully automatic in operation.”
