How Check Point is keeping pace with the cyber security landscape

Having invented the modern firewall that enterprises still use today to keep threat actors at bay, Check Point Software’s founder and CEO Gil Shwed cuts an influential figure in the cyber security industry.

He wrote the first version of FireWall-1, the company’s flagship offering that became the world’s first commercially available firewall product in 1994, and patented stateful inspection, now a de facto standard security technology.

Under his leadership, Check Point has broadened its portfolio, offering a wide range of security capabilities from cloud and network security to a unified security management tool called Infinity that consolidates security capabilities into a single platform.

In a wide-ranging interview with Computer Weekly, Shwed spoke about how Check Point is keeping pace with the cyber security landscape, the company’s key growth areas and approach to cloud security, as well as how generative AI (artificial intelligence) will impact cyber security.

Could you give me a sense of the growth areas for the company, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region?

Shwed: I think the growth areas are almost unlimited because our business is multi-dimensional, especially in Asia, where not all the countries are in the same stage of development. So clearly, there is more potential everywhere.

For those in less developed countries, there’s plenty of potential to catch up and get to a reasonable level of security and those in developed countries will keep investing because they know how important it is.

In terms of technology, I think the real challenge today is from a product perspective. While we can sell more products to secure the cloud, networks and users, it’s important to create a collaborative platform for security architectures to work together.

Now, if you look at traditional defence, when a fire alarm goes off, we’re not going to sit around and say we don’t care. The doors will close, and we will all take care of it to make sure the fire doesn’t spread to the entire building.

The average cloud application has about 15 connections to other applications, and not all of them are owned by your company, so the risk level on the cloud is very high
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