Check Point Software: New Approaches Needed for Cybersecurity

CHECK POINT CPX 360 — As he travels the world as the global security strategist for Check Point Software, Edwin “Eddie” Doyle hears real world stories from customers about their IT security worries and data-security problems. Doyle’s job entails meeting with customers and giving talks about the company’s IT security products as he shares Check Point’s broad cybersecurity capabilities.

The customers talk about their constant stresses, about their never-ending security tasks and their fears of accidentally missing a potential attack or issue that could lead to a damaging data breach or malicious event. Those concerns are heard from customers across the globe, he told Channel Futures at the Check Point CPX360 conference in Las Vegas,. where some 3,400 IT professionals have gathered to learn more about the company’s strategy and tools.

Check Point’s Eddie Doyle

“A common theme among the people who come to talk to me after my talks is that they tell me they stay in detection mode in their anti-malware and other security applications because they need courage to go into prevention mode,” said Doyle.

That can slow networks and systems down when actual attacks take place, he added. Prevention-mode analysis doesn’t fight and defeat attacks, but at least it doesn’t potentially slow systems to a crawl.

For IT security professionals, it’s a tough balance to maintain, he said. And at the same time, IT security leaders say they often don’t have enough staff to always monitor incoming threats and  properly make the right decisions about what is and isn’t an attack.

“Customers say they are having these issues,” said Doyle.

One of his answers to these problems, he said, is to bring in prevention products and test them thoroughly to learn their capabilities so all questions and concerns can be evaluated and answered before deploying them. Then – and only then – companies should take the plunge and move toward putting them into real-world production.

“They should test the products in true prevention mode and then launch them in a production environment to see how they are going to work” on a company’s critical systems, said Doyle. “People are afraid to do it and I get it. That takes courage,” he said, to move from detection to actual prevention in a production environment where slowdowns can mean lost business and lower revenue, and where a true attack can be even worse.

At that point, the conversation inside the organization also must change, said Doyle. It is there, he says, when companies need to look at working closely with a channel partner who can really help by providing broad protection and who can manage all the systems that are involved in an integrated and consistent way.

“Spending money on multiple technologies doesn’t mean you are more secure,” said Doyle.

Partners, particularly MSPs, can help businesses by providing the services and the personnel to deploy and manage those applications for their clients.

“We even partner with big data centers so we can manage the blinking lights for them, too.”

Organizational Change Must Also be Discussed

What’s also needed to bolster IT security, said Doyle, is a new relationship between a company’s IT department leaders and …

… the rest of its executive team.

“The chief information security officer (CISO) needs to report to the company’s general counsel because the general counsel understands risk,” he said. “That’s not happening now, because security was birthed out of IT, so instead most of those people report to the CIO. This is a crucial piece. The CISO carries the weight for security.”

The general counsel, who is part of a company’s board, can then have the needed high-level discussions around issues such as IT security budgets when additional funding is required, said Doyle.

“They need to articulate that while they have a $10 million security budget, they actually have a $12 million security problem, and that the extra $2 million buys this much risk — and what do you want to do about it?”

Information like that coming from the general counsel carries more authority and offers a better reporting structure than going to the CIO, who gets a Christmas bonus based on how much money was saved, said Doyle.

“All the CISOs I’ve spoken to say this is what we need to do. It’s the general counsel who truly understands risk. That’s the business they are in.”

Paula Musich, a security and risk management analyst with Enterprise Management Associates, said Check Point’s approach to providing a full range of unified products to help secure business data and systems can be helpful.

EMA’s Paula Musich

“From a strategic standpoint, CISOs or other IT security executives who are struggling with the complexity of managing 80-plus security products and vendor relationships for different functionality might find Check Point’s consolidation and integration of functions compelling,” said Musich. “Check Point is one of the leading independent IT security providers in the market, although it is not recognized in North America quite as much for that distinction. It is well-known as one of the leading network-security technology providers in North America, but that belies the breadth of its product line.”

Last month, Check Point introduced Maestro, a new architecture designed to secure networks both large and small by orchestrating multiple security gateways, which prevent unsecured traffic from entering an organization’s internal network, into one unified security system.