Carmel Partners – 4000 Appliances and Software Blades

“The Check Point 4800 and 4200 appliances have been a great platform upon which to build out our security architecture. Check Point gives us the ability to consolidate and run more efficiently without the time and money it would take to run all these technologies as independent appliances”

-Dan Meyer, Vice President, Business Intelligence and Technology, Carmel Partners

Overview

Carmel Partners acquires, creates and markets properties by combining cutting edge innovation with bold investment. The company operates and invests in select markets through the U.S. including California, Colorado, Hawaii, New York, Washington, and Washington, D.C.

Buisness Challenges

With a growing multi-faceted organization, Carmel Partners was looking for a way to ensure business productivity which includes securing network traffic, protecting against data loss, and providing secure site-to-site connectivity.

• Provide employees with ability to securely share data
• Protect the network from next generation and Web 2.0 threats
• Reduce management complexity
• Improve visibility of traffic across multiple network segments

Solution

4000 Appliances provide robust integrated connectivity and protection

Carmel Partners relies on the Check Point 4600 and 4200 appliances for robust multi-layered security and connectivity across its distributed environment. With eight offices and datacenters, Carmel Partners was looking for a way to securely connect all locations to share data, applications, and other resources via IPsec VPN tunnels as well as secure its connections to the Internet. They chose to rely on Check Point’s 4000 series appliances configured in a mesh environment to deliver advanced functionality and performance in a robust, scalable, and centrally managed solution. “Check Point enables us to have stable, permanent IPsec VPN tunnels with the ability to dynamically reroute traffic through different offices if needed; it’s like a self-healing network.” – Dan Meyer, Vice President – Business Intelligence and Technology, Carmel Partners.

Software Blade Architecture delivers increased security and flexibility

The Check Point Software Blade Architecture enables Carmel Partners to consolidate multiple Software Blades including Firewall, IPsec VPN, DLP, Application Control, URL Filtering, Identity Awareness, and Mobile Access on individual, centrally managed appliances. These integrated technologies allow the company to protect its network against malicious traffic and intrusions, block or limit access to potentially harmful or productivity draining applications and Websites, and protect against data loss while enabling employees to efficiently communicate and access resources across all offices or in the field via their PC, smartphone, or tablet. “All of these Software Blades, tying them together has really allowed us to safeguard the network from both internal and external threats; the modular capability of Check Point allows us to run so much more efficiently.” – Meyer

Comprehensive security management increases visibility and reporting

To manage its complex security infrastructure, Carmel Partners relies on the Check Point Smart-1 25 security management appliance. With features such as the Logging and Status Software Blade, the company has real-time visibility into all its Check Point gateways and Software Blades enabling its IT staff to manage all aspects of the solution including advanced analysis into billions of logs—all from a single centralized console. This not only simplifies management for Carmel’s IT staff, but also improves security through consistent policies and unified administration across all Software Blades. “It gives us better, insight, better visibility into our network, into our company operations, and what’s going on within the network, what more could I ask for.” – Meyer

Benefits

4000 Appliances deliver performance and scalability

• “The Check Point appliances have advanced processing and memory enabling me to run multiple Software Blades—this has allowed us to consolidate equipment and better secure our network.” – Meyer
• Robust appliances enable consolidation of technologies with central management
• 4000 series appliances offer complete enterprise-grade security performance

Software Blade Architecture

• Consolidation of technologies simplifies management and maintenance
• Integration of policy configuration and management along with log analysis in a single interface reduces time for management and minimizes total cost of ownership
• “Check Point does so much more; it’s a platform that we can build and scale.” – Meyer

Superior Management simplifies administration, logging, and audits

• Advance management along with the Identity Awareness Software Blade delivers the ability to report against any software blade with visibility at the user, group, or machine level
• “Check Point makes the deployment and configuration processes easy and the best part is I don’t have to give up granular control; it’s an easy choice.” – Meyer