Two Decades Ago, Security Was Rather Simple. But If You Look At The Current Threat Landscape, It's Mired With Complexities

Gil Shwed is the founder and CEO of Check Point Software Technologies is considered as the inventor of the modern firewall and authored several patents, such as the company’s Stateful Inspection technology.

Gil Shwed has received numerous accolades for his individual achievements and industry contributions, including the Israel Prize for his contributions to the Israeli tech industry and philanthropy, an honorary Doctor of Science from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, an honorary Doctor of Science from Tel Aviv University, the World Economic Forum’s Global Leader for Tomorrow for his commitment to public affairs and leadership in areas beyond immediate professional interests, and the Academy of Achievement’s Golden Plate Award for his innovative contribution to business and technology. He is also the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Youth University of Tel Aviv University, a Tel Aviv University Governor and founder of the University’s Check Point Institute for Information Security.

In an exclusive interaction with Dataquest on the sidelines of the company’s premier cyber security event CPX 360 in Bangkok recently, Gil Shwed shares the state of the threat landscape and his company’s play in the security space. Excerpts:

- Shrikanth G

Do we need to be paranoid to be pro-active in terms of security?

Different things move different people, but it is important to do the right thing. For example, paranoia can help you take the right or wrong action. More than paranoia, an informed ‘security aware’ is the approach I would recommend for pro-active security.

As a thought leader in this space if you look at the security landscape, what were the key inflection points?

In the past, say two decades ago, security was rather simple. But if you look at the current threat landscape, it’s mired with complexities. This complexity I consider it as a key inflection. This is what is driving the security solution and the market. More and more threat actors are coming in by the day, and the manifestation of the threat is materializing in many different ways that call for a high degree of sophisticated solutions to address the current security complexities.

What differentiates Check Point from other players in the market?

I think the core value we have is a little bit different from other players in the fray. We are a highly customer-centric company and serve their security needs. In what way we are doing it differently is our ability and depth of offering that comes from more than two decades of being in the security space, this has given us an enormous degree of depth to address the myriad security challenges.

The security market is extremely plural with multiple vendors, for an IT decision maker or a CISO, how difficult is to go in for a security solution- is it a multi-vendor approach or single vendor approach that works here?