Check Point's security solutions are available both as software and on dedicated appliances.

by Jeff Goldman [January 28, 2009]

Check Point Software Technologies Ltd., based in Redwood City, California, was founded back in 1993—the company released its first product, Firewall-1, the following year. Since then, Check Point's continued growth has been aided by a number of key acquisitions, including Zone Labs in 2004, Protect Data in 2006, NFR Security in 2007, and Nokia's security appliance business in 2008.

Company product marketing manager Tamir Hardof says the acquisitions helped Check Point expand from an enterprise focus into the SMB and consumer markets, and also helped broaden the company's portfolio of security solutions. "Among our key differentiators is that we have a single unified management architecture—which allows for a single management console to manage all of these different solutions," he says.

Check Point Software Technologies 800 Bridge Parkway Redwood City, CA 94065 U.S. Sales: (866) 488-6691 Web contact page

While Check Point is essentially a software company, Hardof says, its focus has shifted in the past few years towards providing that software on dedicated appliances. The Check Point UTM-1 is a strong example, providing unified threat management functionality (based on the company's Firewall-1 and VPN-1 solutions) on an appliance. "It's really about delivering an entire security solution in a single box that can be managed centrally," he says.

The newest addition to the line is the Power-1 appliance, introduced in 2008, which is designed specifically for high performance environments. "The core software on there is the VPN-1 security gateway, but with added technologies for acceleration with our SecureXL technology, support for multi-core processors with our CoreXL technology, and some other optimizations for performance—which is a key factor for large enterprises and big data centers," Hardof says.

The service provider market
Hardof says the ISP market is key for Check Point, both from a product point of view and in terms of its partner strategy. "All of our solutions provide a lot of flexibility as a platform for service providers to deliver security services to their customers, as well as an option for providing security within their own data centers," he says. "Many of our service provider customers act as both a customer and a partner. As a partner, they're delivering security services to their customers based on the Check Point platform."

A UTM-1 or Power-1 appliance, Hardof says, can either be deployed as a CPE solution at the customer premise and managed remotely, or it can provide security for solutions hosted within a data center. "We have the flexibility to deploy both CPE and in the cloud or in the data center for the customers—whatever meets the customer's needs, and whatever models the various types of service providers are working with—but it's really in the management that the benefit is for the service providers themselves," he says.

To that end, Hardof says, the company's Provider-1 management solution is particularly appropriate for ISPs. "Provider-1 is a multi-domain management solution that allows a service provider to manage multiple customers, fully discreetly, from a single solution," he says. "So they have the granularity to, for each customer, see and deploy separate security solutions and provide unique security policies to each customer… and this can all be done from one station and from one GUI."

These days, Hardof says, more and more companies are turning to service providers for outsourced security services. "When the economy is down, we tend to see more outsourcing," he says. "Companies don't want to deal with the resources required to administer a lot of these IT services on their own—the staff required to do it and the resources they need to audit it and monitor it can be pretty significant. A lot of them look for ways to cut down on those costs, so they'll look to outsourcing."

A broad product line
Ultimately, Hardof says, Check Point's strengths come down to the management capabilities of Provider-1, the maturity of the core technology behind all of the products, and the breadth of the product line. "We're the only vendor that offers such a wide variety of choices of deployment: software, dedicated appliances, and delivery on our hardware platform partners. You can buy the software deployed on a Nokia or a Crossbeam or a Resilience, who are specifically 'Secured by Check Point' hardware platforms," he says.

Looking forward, Hardof says, the ISP market will continue to be a key focus for the company. "We view the service provider market as strategic—we put a lot of resources into it," he says. "We do a lot of close work with our existing service provider customers. They provide feedback to us with what their needs are and what their customers' needs are, and that's really been a driving force for us to continue to be a leader and an innovator."

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Online Resources:
 Intrusion Detection Systems Directory
 IDS Quick Reference Chart

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