SAN JOSE, CA – September 28, 2021 – Cloud networking pioneer Alkira® and cloud security specialist Check Point Software Technologies (NASDAQ: CHKP) today announced a technology alliance to provide Check Point’s CloudGuard firewalls in Alkira’s Cloud Network infrastructure as-a-Service (CNaaS). This comes as organizations deploying application workloads to the cloud are struggling with the complexity of implementing consistent enterprise-wide security controls spanning cloud, multi-cloud and on-premises environments.
The Check Point CloudGuard platform provides cloud native security with advanced threat prevention for all assets and workloads enabling customers to deploy the same robust security in the cloud that they are used to with on-premises systems. Alkira brings a high-performance cloud network-as-a-service with global virtual infrastructure, advanced routing, intelligent service insertion and dynamic auto-scale, simplifying set-up and day 2 operations for enterprise cloud networking and security deployments.
Atif Khan, CTO and Founder of Alkira, said: “Alkira and Check Point simplify security deployments and make it easier for enterprise customers to apply a single security posture across the entire enterprise network spanning cloud, multi-cloud and existing data center or colocation facilities. Delivering the Alkira virtual network infrastructure and Check Point security management tools as a service allows enterprises to avoid the costs and complexity of DIY solutions, and provides guaranteed performance and scalability.”
TJ Gonen, Head of Cloud Security at Check Point added: “The combination of Check Point CloudGuard and Alkira simplifies the process of provisioning and ongoing management in the cloud networking environment which is a big win for enterprise customers. The Check Point CloudGuard platform provides cloud native security with advanced threat prevention for all assets and workloads, across public, hybrid and multi-cloud environments, enabling customers to benefit from a single unified security platform.”
Alkira Cloud Services Exchange® (CSX) fully automates the provisioning, licensing, service insertion, scaling and health monitoring of CloudGuard network security gateways. Alkira seamlessly inserts the CloudGuard gateways at any point in the Alkira global cloud backbone, providing stateful security controls for any on-premises, cloud, and Internet application traffic. Alkira allows customers to decouple CloudGuard from the specific cloud providers, thus providing a more efficient multi-cloud security architecture.
Cloud environments offer global presence and vast compute resources but lack the necessary routing, policy and operational controls enterprises require for a streamlined cloud firewall deployment. Even in a single cloud environment, do-it-yourself solutions result in a complex sprawl of virtual machine instances and traffic management scenarios. They also tend to make inefficient use of resources. All these problems are made worse in multi-cloud environments.
Check Point CloudGuard can be rapidly provisioned into one or multiple globally distributed Alkira Cloud Exchange Points (CXP) to provide security policy enforcement for application traffic between any set of endpoints connected to the Alkira global cloud backbone. Once CloudGuard has been provisioned within an Alkira CXP it can provide:
- Security policy to and between public clouds
- Cloud hosted, stateful firewall services for branches and data centers
- Regionalized Internet breakouts for secure SaaS application access
- Cloud DMZ environment for Internet facing applications
- Shared cloud application services for partners and M&As
Alkira’s visual policy manager simplifies policy configuration, scoping and inspection, and streamlines auditing for assurance and compliance purposes. Alkira’s intent-based approach selectively routes traffic to firewalls according to need, improving efficiency of firewall utilization and optimizing network performance. Customers have a choice of bring-your-own licence (BYOL) or pay-as-you-go (PAYG) licensing models.
Check Point offers a multilevel security architecture that defends enterprises’ cloud, network and mobile device-held information, and a comprehensive and intuitive one-point-of-control security management system.
CloudGuard is available in the Alkira network services marketplace.
For more information:
- Download the Alkira and Check Point solution brief.
- Join the Alkira and Checkpoint webinar October 13
About Alkira
Alkira® developed the Network Cloud which enables enterprises to build and deploy a secure global unified multi-cloud network infrastructure as-a-service that delivers network connectivity, advanced network and services, and end-to-end visibility and governance. Alkira CSX seamlessly and securely connects branches, data centers, remote users and clouds. Alkira was founded by CEO Amir Khan, founder and former CEO of Viptela, and Atif Khan, CTO, former VP of integrated solutions and a member of the Viptela founding team. Alkira has raised $76M from Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Koch Disruptive Technologies, LLC, and GV Capital (formerly Google Ventures). Learn more at www.Alkira.com or follow us @AlkiraNet.
Alkira® and Alkira Cloud Services Exchange® are registered trademarks of Alkira, Inc. All other marks are the property of their respective owners.
Alkira Press Contact:
Mari Mineta Clapp
(408) 398-6433
