Check Point
Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. is an international provider of software and combined hardware and software products for IT security, including network security, endpoint security, data security and security management.
As of 2014 the company had approximately 2,900 employees worldwide. Headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, the company has development centers in Israel, California (ZoneAlarm), Sweden (Former Protect Data development centre), and Belarus. The company has offices in the United States, in San Carlos, California, in Dallas, Texas, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and Sydney Australia.
Check Point competes in the antivirus industry against AVG, Avira, ESET, F-Secure, Kaspersky, McAfee, Panda Security, Sophos and Symantec among others.
History
Check Point was established in Ramat-Gan, Israel in 1993, by Gil Shwed (CEO as of 2015), Marius Nacht (Chairman as of 2015) and Shlomo Kramer (who left Check Point in 2003). Shwed had the initial idea for the company’s core technology known as stateful inspection, which became the foundation for the company's first product, FireWall-1; soon afterwards they also developed one of the world’s first VPN products, VPN-1. Shwed developed the idea while serving in the Unit 8200 of the Israel Defense Forces, where he worked on securing classified networks.
Check Point IPSO
Check Point IPSO is the operating system for the 'Check Point firewall' appliance and other security devices, based on FreeBSD, with numerous hardening features applied.
The IP in IPSO refers to Ipsilon Networks, a company specialising in IP switching acquired by Nokia in 1997.
In 2009, Check Point acquired the Nokia security appliance business, including IPSO, from Nokia.
Variations
IPSO, now at version 6.2, is a fork of FreeBSD 6. There were two other systems, called IPSO-SX and IPSO-LX, that were Linux-based:
Podcasts:
