CPX 2024: Check Point Launches New SaaS Security Solution
Collaboration is Check Point’s No. 1 focus for 2024.
![Check Point CPX 2024: Eyal Manor Check Point CPX 2024: Eyal Manor](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt10e444bce2d36aa8/blt6334dd766cdcfae9/65e9382051fb06040a63a214/Eyal_Manor_Check_Point_CPX_2024.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
Check Point's Eyal Manor on stage at CPX 2024, Las Vegas, March 6.
Check Point is launching Quantum Force, its new line of security appliances maximizing the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud with 10 new network security gateways.
Check Point’s Eyal Manor said the company last released its security appliances in 2020 and “customers need more.”
“For the partners, this is a huge opportunity because what we've seen in the past, like last year −
I won't call it a recession, it was like an economic slowdown − many organizations decided to park any decision to make an appliance refresh, and now what we see this year is the economy is starting to improve, and now suddenly there is budget and there is a need. And now you also have an excellent security solution that you can provide as a part of the refresh. You're refreshing something from four years ago, which is two to four times better for pretty much the same level of price. So it became very attractive for our partners right now to refresh some of those appliances. We launched them silently in November, so we went to a few of our partners and the partners just loved it. We really see the hunger to refresh. And the security capabilities behind the refresh have become far more attractive.”
Check Point is fully invested in AI, Manor said. Everything is AI-powered now.
“We are leveraging AI in two arenas,” he said. “One arena is just to prevent more threats. It became more and more complex to stop attackers unless you're using AI technologies. So [Check Point solutions] are using AI. They become more scalable, more robust, the operations become cheaper, they become more reliable. You need the AI to detect something that was generated by AI in order to prevent it. And here we are investing in more and more capabilities to just prevent more threats.”
Check Point announced 10 new AI-based engines and this contributed to the company’s threat prevention capabilities last year, Manor said.
“The second arena is where our customers interact with AI,” he said. “And this is really helping us help our customers cope with the problem of lack of security practitioners. For example, ChatGPT, Midjourney and Microsoft Copilot, I’m using them on a daily basis to improve my job. Why shouldn't a security analyst or security practitioner do the same? So we developed what we call Infinity Copilot. It's built into the infinity platform, so it knows all of the products. It knows the internet, all of the settings, all of the logs, all of the documentation, everything. For our customers and even partners that are providing MSSP services or managed services, it's amazing. Suddenly operations that took 30 minutes or three hours are taking a minute and a half or 5 minutes. And this is only the beginning. Today, think of it as an assistant, and a bit later this year it’s going to shift from your assistant to your consultant, to the entity that even tells you what you should be doing better. So it’s not going to wait for you to give it instructions. It’s actually going to wake up in the morning and tell you, 'Hey, I found something that can be done better and I’ve just done it. Sit back and relax, I’ve protected it for you.'”
Check Point always tells partners and customers not to blindly follow AI, Manor said.
“Sometimes AI has too much confidence that it is right," he said. "It will just shoot an answer at you and it will tell you this is what you need to do, and you read it and you say, 'No, this is wrong.' So what I do and what we always recommend our customers do is don't follow AI blindly. Ask AI, 'What can I do? How would you fix this situation? Then you get an answer and challenge the answer. Think about it. Does it make sense? Is it reliable? Challenge the system and double-verify before you are making a change until you feel trustworthy.”
Amit Bareket, Check Point’s vice president of secure service edge, previously was co-founder and CEO of Perimeter 81, which Check Point acquired last fall. He said the two companies coming together created a stronger secure access service edge (SASE) solution.
“One of the unique [Perimeter 81] selling points was that we deliver the best experience for SASE in the market,” he said. “We built a SASE solution as the best architecture in our point of view, the hybrid SASE, to deliver two times faster internet and a much better user experience. And Check Point has the best security. So by connecting together, it's a very massive opportunity, the synergistic values are very large. Check Point completed the acquisition and kept us as a rocket, which means that we operate our own profit and loss, and business, and keep it operational as-is, and baking in all the power, the security features and the teams, and the sales and the icing, all of the strength of Check Point, to operate and build the best SASE solution out there in the market. It has been almost six months since we completed the acquisition and two weeks after we closed, we already launched a service under our SASE by Check Point, and we delivered our first sales. Since then, the feedback has been great and so I think it was a very positive experience and a lot of excitement for what's ahead.”
Check Point commissioned research with IDC looking at the evolving role of the CISO. In October-November 2023, IDC conducted an global survey with 847 security leaders across 17 countries to better identify their roles, responsibilities and the realities they face on the job.
Responses confirmed the CISO role is evolving as they straddle dual responsibilities as a cybersecurity leader and a business enabler. Many might believe a CISO’s sole responsibility is to assess risks, and develop, manage and execute security programs to protect the organization. That’s no longer the case. Survey responses showed that security practices must be in full alignment with business and innovation initiatives. The modern CISO is one that can capably balance strategic business needs with technical practice tactics.
Other key IDC survey insights:
CISOs are thinking strategically about business goals, and security technologies and architectures. Today’s landscape consists of networks, clouds and assorted endpoints, and providing resilience to sophisticated cyberattacks is an all-consuming strategic process.
In addition to business enabler and guardian, as CISOs mature in their role, they become legal and compliance advisor, risk manager, auditor, customer support leader and a chief communicator. CISOs are extremely concerned with inflationary impact on budget rather than staffing.
The CISO and CIO relationship is much more complex than most believed. CISOs and CIOs, though aligned to work together, are not always on the same page with IT and security priorities. CISOs and CIOs, for example, have diverging opinions on the role a CISO may play when it comes to business resiliency.
Frank Dickson, IDC analyst, said the expanding responsibilities associated with CISOs aren't necessarily driving them away, but it is does change the characteristics of consideration for the CISO.
“A CISO needs to be an expert in security, but you're not necessarily going to promote someone to the role of CISO just because they're an expert in security,” he said. “You have to be able to promote them based upon their ability to work with people, their ability to lead people, their ability to communicate. And so what it does do is change the consideration for who an organization may select as a CISO."
Also at CPX 2024, Check Point announced its Infinity Platform has been ranked as the No. 1 zero-trust platform in the latest Miercom Zero Trust Platform Assessment.
Miercom’s evaluation focused on 10 fundamental zero trust enterprise practices. Miercom cited Check Point’s platform capabilities, user experience and zero-trust security effectiveness.
Rob Smithers, Miercom’s CEO, said overall user experience is critical because the “end user has to live with the policy you made,” and a positive user experience “lets them do their job effectively,”
“Check Point’s commitment to providing a superior zero-trust platform and its leadership in the zero-trust security landscape was clear throughout our analysis,” he said. “We are proud to present Check Point Software Technologies with the Miercom Certified Secure award.”
Also at CPX 2024, Check Point announced its Infinity Platform has been ranked as the No. 1 zero-trust platform in the latest Miercom Zero Trust Platform Assessment.
Miercom’s evaluation focused on 10 fundamental zero trust enterprise practices. Miercom cited Check Point’s platform capabilities, user experience and zero-trust security effectiveness.
Rob Smithers, Miercom’s CEO, said overall user experience is critical because the “end user has to live with the policy you made,” and a positive user experience “lets them do their job effectively,”
“Check Point’s commitment to providing a superior zero-trust platform and its leadership in the zero-trust security landscape was clear throughout our analysis,” he said. “We are proud to present Check Point Software Technologies with the Miercom Certified Secure award.”
CHECK POINT CPX 2024 — On day one of CPX 2024, Check Point Software Technologies unveiled its new Harmony SaaS solution for safeguarding against SaaS-based threats.
Harmony SaaS offers protection by integrating into customers’ existing infrastructure and providing real-time threat prevention. With Harmony SaaS, organizations can safeguard their SaaS ecosystem against threats such as data theft and account takeover.
Eyal Manor, Check Point’s vice president of product management, tells us SaaS platforms can be especially vulnerable to attacks. There’s been an explosion in SaaS platforms like Microsoft 365 and Salesforce, and it has become a huge marketplace.
“In my organization, we have Microsoft 365, and say somebody has downloaded a specific tool, an add-in. Think about the thousands of email applications that you can download, and with each and every one of them, all they need is just a username and password and that's it, they get permissions to get your data, but you cannot track it,” he said. “You don't know what they take or where they store it, if they're legitimate or not. And what we are doing with Harmony SaaS, we are monitoring exactly these services that are connecting to your platform, and making sure that you will stay safe. If they are not safe, we will stop it. And if you have end users that are downloading, for example, illegitimate email applications, they will get stopped ... "
If a token is stolen and somebody is using that in a suspicious way, Check Point will stop it, Manor said.
Check Point SaaS Threat Prevention 'Unique'
“Nobody does what we call SaaS interconnections threat prevention, and this is unique,” Manor said. “It helps partners in that it's very easy to demonstrate this value to their customers. You come in the morning, you connect, for example, your Microsoft 365, and by the afternoon, I show you that in your organization there are 70 different flavors of email clients. Some of them are from suspicious countries or suspicious vendors, and let's just wipe them. So it's nice, it's easy and it shows value.”
During his keynote, Gil Shwed, Check Point’s CEO and founder, said his company’s prevention-first strategy is built on the three Cs: comprehensive, consolidated and collaboration. Collaboration is Check Point’s No. 1 focus for 2024.
“We really need to take all the good things we do in the industry, all of the technologies, and make them work together because if we work in these multiple layers and we synchronize, and we act together in real time … we can prevent the attacks and we can utilize all of the technologies that we’re developing and that you’re using to the most extent,” he said. “The secret sauce here is the collaboration; it’s the only way to gain an advantage. Our ThreatCloud in the Check Point platform is truly collaborative, and it’s going to become more and more collaborative every day.”
Scroll through our slideshow above for more from day one of CPX 2024.
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