Check Point's new security infrastructure, Softwareblades, consists of building blocks that are independent and can stand alone on any system. They can interoperate, be modular and are centrally managed.
Juliette Sultan, VP of global marketing for Check Point, says the company used a customer advisory board and conducted 50 interviews with customers and partners, both enterprises and SMEs.
"What came out of this was that security infrastructure of today is torn in multiple directions. In the changing business environment there are evolving threats, pressure to reduce TCO, and pressure to keep things simple and manageable."
Sultan says customers do not want to pay for the bits they don't need. They do not want multiple vendors and want to optimise and leverage existing infrastructure. They need the ability to consolidate, optimise, and re-allocate without having to rethink the architecture for every single vendor.
"They do not want to have to change their people organisation because technology requires them to. It is also a concern that security will be compromised in the process of deploying new architecture. They also don't want to give up on future flexibility. Lastly, keeping it simple and unified is top of mind.”
Customers will choose a software container, based on size, the number of cores between one and eight, and populate it with the needed blades.
“It is simple, flexible and secure and can be up-scaled easily. We are also implementing the first system to manage the software blades, called the R70. Then customers select elements they need from a library of blades, such as firewall, VPN, IPS, NAC, routing and networking, and acceleration,” says Sultan.
"The first option is to go a la carte, selecting what blades the customer needs, but we also offer predefined systems that are specific to certain configurations and commonly used. It's up to the customer what is going to work for them. Upgrading is easy from one container to another and just adding the extra blades. At present, there are over 20 blades available, all offering new features and functionality."
The new architecture offers custom configuration for SME and enterprise users, she says, with different configurations. "We offer the ability to custom configure every gateway, with the ability to manage them from a single console."
Another critical component is performance to deliver the applications, she adds. Many customers do not turn on IPS due to performance concerns. The Check Point solution enables full IPS utilisation without compromising performance. It works by activating the IPS blade, activating the acceleration blade and then setting guaranteed performance levels.
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