Cloud emulation sandboxing service tackles zero-day attacks
Check Point has announced the availability of Check Point R77, the latest release for its Software Blade Architecture. R77 offers over 50 product enhancements, including the new ThreatCloud Emulation Service, HyperSpect performance enhancing technology, Compliance Software Blade, new Central Device Management, improved user identity awareness, and enhancements to the GAiA Unified Operating System.
Check Point’s ThreatCloud Emulation Service prevents infections from zero-day exploits, new variants of malware, and targeted attacks and APT. Part of Check Point’s leading multi-layered Threat Prevention solution, ThreatCloud Emulation Service quickly inspects suspicious files, emulates how they run to discover malicious behavior, and instantly blocks newly identified malware in email attachments, file downloads, and direct web content. Attack information is then shared to Check Point’s collaborative cloud knowledge base, ThreatCloud, for automatic protection.
ThreatCloud Emulation was announced on gateways in February 2013 and is now offered as a cloud service, based on a global, organization-wide monthly quota of scanned files. This quota is across all of the security gateways on an organization’s network and can be extended based on usage and growth. ThreatCloud Emulation is also available through the Private Cloud Emulation Appliance.
Check Point HyperSpect
R77 is also the first release to include Check Point HyperSpect, an intelligent, adaptive content inspection engine that maximizes hardware utilization through a range of optimizations and accelerations, including hyper threading. Through HyperSpect, organizations will experience significantly higher performance, including up to 50% real-world performance boost on all high-end platforms.
With the simple software upgrade to R77, organizations can safely consolidate security by utilizing Check Point’s multi-layered software blade protections on the same platform while experiencing sustained performance. HyperSpect increases compute power and optimizes inspection tailored to the most popular Internet traffic such as media streaming and http communication, which consume the greatest amount of Internet bandwidth.
Check Point Compliance Software Blade
Check Point’s Compliance Software Blade will be generally available through the R77 release. Introduced in March 2013, the Compliance Software Blade is the first next-generation-firewall-integrated and fully-automated compliance monitoring solution that leverages an extensive knowledge of regulatory requirements and over 300 Security Best Practices.
It reduces the complexity of external compliance requirements and internal security mandates by providing instant notification of policy changes, by continuously assessing security posture across all Check Point Software Blades and by offering actionable recommendations to improve compliance and security.
“Our customers need to stay one step ahead of the bad guys to protect their networks, and R77 provides the best platform and security protections to help them to do that. With optimized performance, cloud-based threat emulation and automated compliance monitoring, our software blade architecture is designed from the ground up to be the most comprehensive multi-layered security solution available today,” said Dorit Dor, vice president of products at Check Point.
Other product enhancements:
New and integrated central device management: Organizations can efficiently manage and maintain multiple security gateways utilizing the new Central Device Management feature. New provisioning capabilities in SmartDashboard management console help to eliminate configuration errors in complex environments and reduce the operational cost of managing and maintaining security environments. These capabilities do not require an additional license for implementation.
Check Point GAiA: Enhancements to the Check Point GAiA Unified Secure Operating System brings faster upgrade and updates with decreased downtime by 90% as well as improved user experience on GAiA WebUI for security administrators.
Identity awareness integration: Updates include improved user identity accuracy in non-windows environments by acquiring user identity from RADIUS and IF-MAP integration.
Improved licensing user experience: R77 makes licensing transparent with automatic license retrieval and data synchronization between Check Point UserCenter and the security management console.
The R77 Release is a free upgrade for existing customers. The ThreatCloud Emulation Service is based on a global organizational quota, which begins at a monthly list price of $500 for up to 10,000 files inspected per month.