'Security market is dynamic, any time'

Itzack Weinreb, vice-president, Asia Pacific, Check Point Software Technologies Ltd, shares with Pankaj Maru of CyberMedia News his insight on the new Software Blade Architecture and its evolution, the slowdown and its constraints on IT budgets, R&D initiative and much more. Excerpts:

Check Point has come out with new Software Blade Architecture. So what are the changes in threats and security over the years that led you to launch this new architecture?

Security market is very dynamic, any time. Almost every year we are coming with very important messages. In the beginning, it was the simple virus, so we had the Firewall and then came the email virus like 'love-me', 'love bug' and such stuffs, followed by phishing and data virus.

And now with mobile phones becoming smarter, there’s need to protect it from virus, too.

With such complications around, we came with UTM1 (unified threat management) box where everything is in a single box, then after a year we came with endpoint security.

But, now we found out that about 90 per cent of the customers using UTM only need basic Firewall and so why should they have pay for all the rest? Hence, we developed the Software Blades as per customers' needs.

Almost every year we are coming with new innovative ideas. Luckily, most ideas from us came from our CEO, who invented Firewall some 15 years ago and his brain continues to invent for us all the time. And we try to be first, or at least one of the first, in the market with our technology and ideas.

And luckily, the market adjusted to our ideas and technology, as all of them followed Firewall, UTM1 and Endpoint, as it become an industry standard.

Basically the market is following us lots of the time whether it’s Firewall, UTM or Endpoint. And now with Blades, we believe and hope that it will create some kind of a standard.

In the current economic slowdown with cut in IT budgets, do you think IT companies will go for new kind of technology and solutions such as Blades?

Yes, there’s no doubt that companies will go for newer technology and solutions such as Blades, particularly in the security.

First of all, IT budgets have decreased this year compared to last year, where some companies decreased IT budgets by 10-15 per cents. However, in such cuts the security is touched at the last, but no company will compromise on security.

And our products are mainly on the Opex (operational expense) and not the Capex (capital expense). So we believe that even with cut in IT budgets, there will be investment done in the security and risk management.

By this kind of an approach, and with our MSB approach model, we allow our customers to spend on operational expense and not capital expense.

For example, the service providers building UTM farm to offer security and risk management services to small and large enterprises, where these enterprises pay on monthly basis with big investments.

For instance, let us take two giants like Infosys and TCS, which offer lots of IT jobs and services to other companies and sectors. These companies can actually invest in IT assets, appliances and components.

And then it can offer various IT related services to large base of small customers and clients and this, in return, will help the customers to save money from investing more in IT assets and components. Hence it’s a win-win situation for both companies. It’s an example of adapting to the market conditions.

How important is India to Check Point in terms of market sales and also R&D?

India as a country in terms of business market in Asia Pacific is very important. In terms of business in last five years there's an extremely high growth, nearly about to 50 per cent. And we see a rise in this growth every year because of the potential in Indian market, which is very huge compared to other countries.

In terms of R&D, it is mainly done by Israel because it is the security. So currently, in India we are not holding any R&D team but we do have sales and support teams. Though the R&D is mainly done in Israel, no one knows about future – it can be in India or some other place.

That doesn't mean that India has less ability or talents. From my personal past experiences, not just with Check Point, even at large, it's a known fact that the Indian R&D engineers are very good and intelligent in the IT.