AT&T at Check Point CPX 360: Massive Cybersecurity Consolidation Coming

(Pictured above: AT&T Cybersecurity’s Terry Hect on stage at Check Point’s CPX360 event in New Orleans, Feb. 29.)

CHECK POINT CPX360 — The cybersecurity industry is headed for an even bigger consolidation during the next five years as the focus on cloud and endpoint protection intensifies.

That’s according to Terry Hect, AT&T‘s vice president of technology strategy. He took the main stage during the final day of Check Point Software Technologies‘ CPX 360 2020 conference in New Orleans.

During the conference, Check Point unveiled Infinity Next, its latest Infinity cybersecurity architecture, and announced a new global partner program.

AT&T has been a Check Point vendor partner for more than 20 years. AT&T Cybersecurity is the third-largest cybersecurity company in the world.

The volume of new cybersecurity companies that are popping up can’t be sustained, Hect said. There are more than 5,000 companies in the industry globally.

“We as an industry can’t continue to spread the technology out so wide,” he said. “I think we’re going to see a continued drive to cloud environments, so cloud and endpoint being the two bigger players. Many of the things in the middle are going to evaporate or lose much of its traction because the industry is pushing us to the cloud and to the endpoint.”

AT&T has 20,000 managed devices with Check Point and “we truly expect to see our partnership grow as this environment grows,” Hect said.

“They’re well-embedded in the endpoint space and they’re well-embedded in the cloud space,” he said. “If Check Point stays true to form, they’re well-tested, well-delivered technologies. I believe Check Point will be one of the aristocrat companies that gets pulled through into the future. Whether you’re a telco provider or a partner, or small business vendor, Check Point is going to continue to drive this.”

AT&T Cybersecurity mitigates 700 distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks each week. It includes eight security operations centers (SOCs) globally, and has 2,000 security staff.

Looking ahead, AT&T Cybersecurity is going to go to market in five ways: network and cloud; endpoint solutions; identity and access management (IAM); threat detection and response; and cyberstrategy risk and consulting.

When it comes to threat detection and response, the number of threats isn’t going to decrease as they’re getting “bigger and more powerful,” Hect said. Because of that, the focus needs to be on finding a way to “eliminate as many as you can as fast as you can” to focus on those that are harder to find, he said.

“If you can’t see it, you can’t control it, and if you can’t control it, you’re going to lose badly,” he said.

Another longtime partner at CPX 360 is SHI, a technology solution provider that caters to the Fortune 500, has a state and local government group, and a division focused on SMBs. Gopal Kutty, senior director of strategic accounts, said cybersecurity is a $1.4 billion business within SHI, “and our goal is to invest heavily in cybersecurity and grow that business.”

“Our business with Check Point is growing rapidly,” he said. “Infinity Next is exciting. Infinity itself was great, but now with the addition of AI and ML, there’s a more compelling story to tell the customer.”

What’s most exciting about Check Point is the focus on cloud security, especially with recent acquisitions, Kutty said.

“The story that Check Point has to tell is more compelling because cloud security is the next big thing, and SHI is uniquely positioned to be a partner in that space because SHI is the largest partner of AWS in the world today and we’re the largest Azure partner in North America,” he said. “We’re building out these virtual sandboxes for our customers to play with, so we actually build out environments and then the customer can test various cloud security products. So this is going to be a great collaboration that we’re really excited about to move this particular piece forward.”