Check Point Software Technologies Releases Turnkey PKI Solution for VPN-1
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With VPN-1 Certificate Manager, Check Point Becomes First VPN Vendor to Enable Quick and Easy Deployment of Secure, Scalable and Manageable VPNs RSA DATA SECURITY CONFERENCE, SAN JOSE, Calif., January 19, 1999 — Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. (Nasdaq: CHKPF), the worldwide leader in secure enterprise networking solutions, today announced the release of VPN-1 Certificate ManagerTM , a turnkey public key infrastructure (PKI) solution for enabling IPSec/IKE-compliant Virtual Private Networking. VPN-1 Certificate Manager empowers organizations to implement secure and scalable VPNs across intranets, extranets and the Internet, with unprecedented ease of deployment and manageability. VPN-1 Certificate Manager is part of the Check PointTM VPN-1 family of products, which includes VPN-1 Gateway software, the VPN-1 SecuRemote client, the VPN-1 RemoteLink appliance and the VPN-1 Accelerator Card. More than 10,000 sites throughout the world have already deployed Check Point Software's VPN-1 gateways to secure critical business communications over intranets, extranets and the Internet. Check Point Software's VPN-1 client and gateway solutions support both the turnkey VPN-1 Certificate Manager and third-party PKI solutions as part of an overall enterprise security implementation. "Integrated strong authentication and user management are important customer requirements for enabling scalable, secure and manageable VPNs," said Asheem Chandna, vice president of marketing and business development for Check Point Software Technologies, Inc. "Today with the release of VPN-1 Certificate Manager, Check Point becomes the industry's first VPN vendor to provide a turnkey VPN solution that includes a standards-based PKI, a LDAP repository and a comprehensive policy-based management architecture. This marks an important milestone in the continued industry leadership of our VPN-1 product line."
With the release of VPN-1 Certificate Manager, organizations can easily implement and maintain a state-of-the-art VPN that incorporates technologies from market leaders in enterprise security solutions. VPN-1 Certificate Manager enables Check Point VPN-1 customers to add PKI capabilities and continue to manage their enterprise-wide security policy – including the VPN, user accounts and digital certificates – from Check Point Software's industry-leading centralized policy-based management console. The administrative interface includes Check Point Software's Account Management Client, a comprehensive tool for managing the account and certificate lifecycle of VPN-1 users and sites. A key component of VPN-1 Certificate Manager is the award-winning Entrust/PKITM from EntrustTM Technologies Inc. (Nasdaq: ENTU), a spin-off of telecom giant Nortel and one of the largest providers of PKI software with over 600 corporate and government customers. Within the VPN-1 Certificate Manager solution, Entrust/PKI manages the generation, signing and revocation of X.509 digital certificates. For leading edge scalability and performance, Check Point Software has also incorporated Netscape Communications Corporation's (NASDAQ: NSCP) Netscape Directory Server, the market leading LDAP-based directory with over 50 million seats licensed in the past six months. Within VPN-1 Certificate Manager, Netscape Directory Server stores the user information and provides the tools for publishing digital certificates and Certificate Revocation Lists. "Netscape is pleased to be working with Check Point Software to provide advanced security solutions," said David Weiden, vice president of directory server and security products at Netscape. "The combination of Netscape Directory Server within Check Point VPN-1 Certificate Manager helps to enhance security for customers operating in the Net Economy."
Unified Interface is Key to Enabling Scalability and Easy Management of Users and Certificates As organizations extend their networks to growing numbers of employees, remote offices, customers and business partners, both scalability and manageability become critical issues. To effectively manage all of the user information necessary for the VPN, network managers must often deal with multiple user databases and administrative interfaces. By adhering to the IPSec standard and implementing X.509-based digital certificates instead of fixed passwords to verify user identity, VPN-1 Certificate Manager provides superior security and scalability for VPN communications while reducing management overhead and lowering administrative costs. VPN-1 Certificate Manager provides a truly scalable and manageable authentication solution for VPNs which consist of a large number of clients and gateways. Of the two authentication methods supported by the Internet Key Exchange (IKE) standard – pre-shared secret passwords and X.509 digital certificates – only certificate-based authentication supported by a robust PKI is able to scale beyond a small VPN deployment. Likewise, the LDAP protocol is now the accepted standard for storing and managing information about large numbers of application users. VPN-1 Certificate Manager provides not only the infrastructure components to ensure that Check Point VPN-1 deployments can scale to support a virtually unlimited number of VPN users and sites, but the necessary administrative tools as well. To effectively manage all of the user information necessary for expanding VPN deployments, network managers must often deal with multiple user databases and administrative interfaces. To address these issues, VPN-1 Certificate Manager includes the Account Management administrative GUI to manage all aspects of the user account lifecycle – identity, account information, security and VPN attributes – along with the certificate lifecycle. The querying functionality and user templates provided by the Account Management client GUI aid in the ongoing management of user-level security attributes. This user management component is part of the management console for the entire enterprise security policy, enabling customers to improve management efficiency and minimize risks associated with data inconsistency, which can occur when multiple administrative tools are in use.
To simplify the process of deploying products from multiple vendors, Check Point Software has developed a unified installation and configuration procedure for all of the PKI components, making the product channel-ready for rapid market deployment. "What Check Point Software has developed is the first PKI implementation to be truly streamlined specifically for VPNs," said John Ryan, president and CEO, Entrust Technologies Inc. "They've combined the key features of our PKI solution with their own industry-leading management tools to deliver a solution that is not only easy to implement, but also one that will save network administrators and channel partners tremendous amounts of time and energy." Like most sophisticated technologies, PKI solutions have in the past required large efforts on the part of network security experts to first bring components from multiple vendors together, and then to manage these components separately on an ongoing basis. "Check Point Software's VPN-1 Certificate Manager is the right PKI solution for our customers who are implementing IPSec-compliant VPNs," said Mark Sims, president, Netrex, Inc., a Check Point Software Premier Partner Alliance member. "The work that Check Point Software has done to integrate all the necessary technologies is invaluable, making this an easy solution for Netrex as a channel partner to sell and support. From the vantage point of our customers, the streamlined installation process and policy-based management interface make VPN-1 Certificate Manager the clear choice for deploying a PKI."
Pricing and Availability VPN-1 Certificate Manager is immediately available for the Microsoft Windows NT platform; a subsequent version for Sun Solaris is planned for the second quarter of 1999. Pricing for VPN-1 Certificate Manager begins at less than $28 per seat which includes permanent licenses for the Entrust Certificate Authority and Netscape Directory Server embedded components. VPN-1 Certificate Manager demonstrations will be held at the Check Point Software exhibit booth #817 at the 1999 RSA Data Security Conference & Expo.
About Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. (Nasdaq: CHKPF) is the worldwide leader in secure enterprise networking solutions. The company's integrated architecture includes network security (FireWall-1, VPN-1, Open Security Manager and Provider-1), traffic control (FloodGate-1 and ConnectControl) and IP address management (Meta IP). Check Point solutions enable customers to implement centralized policy-based management with enterprise-wide distributed deployment. Via the OPSEC Alliance, Check Point's products seamlessly integrate with "best-of-breed" products from almost 200 leading industry partners. The company has U.S. headquarters in Redwood City, California and international headquarters in Ramat-Gan, Israel. For more information, please call (800) 429-4391 or (650) 628-2000 or visit http://www.checkpoint.com or http://www.opsec.com. ### (c) 1999 Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. All rights reserved. Check Point, the Check Point logo, FireWall-1, FloodGate-1, INSPECT, IQ Engine, Open Security Extension, Open Security Manager, OPSEC, Provider-1, SecuRemote, VPN-1 Accelerator Card, Certificate Manager, and ConnectControl are trademarks or registered trademarks of Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. Meta IP and Meta DNS are trademarks of MetaInfo, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Check Point Software Technologies, Inc. All other product names mentioned herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The products described in this document are protected by U.S. Patent No. 5,606,668 and may be protected by other U.S. Patents, foreign patents, or pending applications. |