Checkpoint going the Palo Alto way ?

[joeri]

Looks like they will offer the application control on another blade:Check Point to Add Security Controls for Over 50,000 Applications and Web 2.0 Widgets - Press Release

Looks a lot like Palo Alto to be honest !

[Routerkid1]

Palo Alto, was founded by former Check Point employee.

[Robby Cauwerts]

I'm very curious how CP will integrate this in their FW.
This is definitely a step in the right direction. The traditional firewall approach where one would open/close tcp/udp ports is outdated.

[Thorpuse]

The bit I find most interesting is that they are doing this via acquisition, not using their own R&D....

[marklar]

Maybe CP wanted their customer base? Easier to buy the competition than develop a better product and 'win' their customers over.

From their marketing bumpf:
FaceTime's award-winning solutions are used by over
350 customers, with over 50 percent of the largest global
100 financial institutions, including seven of the eight largest
U.S. banks. Hundreds of customers worldwide, including
Dominion Energy, NCR, Standard Bank London, Thomas
Weisel Partners and Wachovia Securities among others rely
on FaceTime solutions. FaceTime has strategic partnerships
with all leading public and private IM network providers,
including AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo!, IBM, Bloomberg, Jabber
and Reuters.

Some decent customers there...

m.

[Thorpuse]

Check Point already claims 100% penetration of the Fortune 100, and 98% of the Fortune 500. It doesn't need to buy anyone to get into the big end of town...

It just seems to me that all of the latest technologies that have been innovative in CP's roster have been bought rather than developed. I'm sure they'd disagree about IPS, but they did buy into that market as well.... Considering that CP spent years not acquiring people and being proud of the innovations coming out of their "largest security R&D department in the world", it's an interesting change of strategy. It also makes me wonder what the next real innovation that CP themselves will deliver will be. I've heard rumours of some really interesting technologies they are working on, but I worry about their leadership position and claims to innovation these days. PaloAlto it seems really did steal a march on them here, and if this is the response, then it certainly is going to be interesting times....

[PhoneBoy]

Palo Alto was not just co-founded by any former Check Point employee, it was one of the guys who came up with Stateful Inspection--Nir Zuk. There's also a certain amount of irony in the fact that they are in Ipsilon Networks old building, which is the company Nokia acquired at the end of 1997 that become Nokia's Security Appliance Business.

Anyway, in parsing the press release--which is all I can do since I'm on vacation--Check Point bought a database, and only a database. Sort of like buying anti-virus signatures and not the anti-virus engine to go with it.

[joeri]

I wonder how they will handle performance wise, they'll probably just keep adding cores to each system, let's face it on 1 box, firewall, IPS, some other stuff like floodgate..., the "application" handling, that will need quite some power. Maybe they'll incorporate it in their new GAIA OS from the start.

[Thorpuse]

Originally Posted by PhoneBoy

Palo Alto was not just co-founded by any former Check Point employee, it was one of the guys who came up with Stateful Inspection--Nir Zuk.

Nir Zuk was also one of the main developers for Netscreen in its early iterations (pre-Juniper acquisition). The history there is probably more relevant than his CP pedigree....

[Routerkid1]

Originally Posted by Thorpuse

Check Point already claims 100% penetration of the Fortune 100, and 98% of the Fortune 500. It doesn't need to buy anyone to get into the big end of town...

It just seems to me that all of the latest technologies that have been innovative in CP's roster have been bought rather than developed. I'm sure they'd disagree about IPS, but they did buy into that market as well.... Considering that CP spent years not acquiring people and being proud of the innovations coming out of their "largest security R&D department in the world", it's an interesting change of strategy. It also makes me wonder what the next real innovation that CP themselves will deliver will be. I've heard rumours of some really interesting technologies they are working on, but I worry about their leadership position and claims to innovation these days. PaloAlto it seems really did steal a march on them here, and if this is the response, then it certainly is going to be interesting times....

It is mush easier to buy a company, Cisco makes lots of money buying companies and improving the products.

[marklar]

Originally Posted by Routerkid1

It is mush easier to buy a company, Cisco makes lots of money buying companies and improving the products.

You had me until the last 4 words :)

Cisco is great at buying companies and slapping their logo on top, but improvements are very slow (PIX, Netranger, Arrowpoint)

[Routerkid1]

Originally Posted by marklar

You had me until the last 4 words :)

Cisco is great at buying companies and slapping their logo on top, but improvements are very slow (PIX, Netranger, Arrowpoint)

Yea I will agree with you on that last part. I hate Pix FW's

[chillyjim]

Check Point purchased just the database. Basically to kickstart the development. Did not buy the whole company.

[Thorpuse]

Originally Posted by chillyjim

Check Point purchased just the database. Basically to kickstart the development. Did not buy the whole company.

Since when has buying a database been press-release worthy? It concerns me greatly if development is only now being kickstarted, when CP's opposition (Fortinet, PaloAlto) have been actively in this space for 2 years... I still want to believe that CP wants to be the leader and innovator in this space, but the evidence is mounting that they've lost focus.

[chillyjim]

Originally Posted by Thorpuse

Since when has buying a database been press-release worthy? It concerns me greatly if development is only now being kickstarted, when CP's opposition (Fortinet, PaloAlto) have been actively in this space for 2 years... I still want to believe that CP wants to be the leader and innovator in this space, but the evidence is mounting that they've lost focus.

I found the press release kind of strange too (My sales rep thought CHKP purchased the whole facetime company).

The technology to do something was developed internally, the decision to build the whole database from scratch or buy someone's already developed database tends to be an easy one.

[Thorpuse]

Originally Posted by chillyjim

The technology to do something was developed internally, the decision to build the whole database from scratch or buy someone's already developed database tends to be an easy one.

Let's hope the implementation of this is better than what they did with SurfControl, CA or Commtouch then. If this is all it is, I can't say I'm inspired or filled with any confidence that this will innovate in any significant way.

Maybe it really is time to fix the firewall....