Check Point Celebrates 25 Years of Securing the Internet

Back in 1993, Jurassic Park beat E.T. to become the highest-grossing movie worldwide. The singer Prince changed his name to his signature ‘symbol.’  The first web browser, Mosaic, had just been introduced; but as there were only around 150 websites available to browse, commercial use of the Internet was still mostly limited to newsgroups, FTP servers and Compuserve email.  Viruses spread from PC to PC via floppy disk. The online world was very different compared to what it is today.

But a new company had just been formed by a young man who saw the potential of the Internet.  He realized that businesses would start to connect to it, and that they would need a way to protect themselves and their data from interception and other Internet threats.  He and his colleagues developed a product to deliver that protection. The company was Check Point, and the product was Firewall-1, the world’s first stateful inspection firewall.

Fast forward 25 years to today, and Gil Shwed, Check Point’s Founder and CEO, rang the Nasdaq Stock Market Closing Bell in celebration of the 25^th anniversary of the company’s foundation. The ceremony took place at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York City, and also celebrated 22 years since Check Point’s listing as CHKP, which took place on June 28, 1996.

Speaking at the Nasdaq MarketSite, Gil Shwed said:  “In the 1990s, we invented the Firewall to prevent the 2^nd generation of Internet-based attacks.  In the early 2000s we changed the security landscape by integrating Intrusion Prevention into security gateways to cope with the 3^rd generation of attacks and the erosion in application vulnerabilities. At the start of this decade we were the first to implement behavioral analysis to detect and prevent the 4^th generation of attacks, polymorphic malware; and today we are the only cyber security vendor with the complete architecture to overcome the fast-moving, mega-scale 5^th generation of cyber-attacks.

“We are honored to be here 22 years after we stood here for the first time, and to celebrate 25 years of securing the internet.  Check Point has not only grown with the Internet revolution, it has made it safe.

“I am grateful to Check Point’s men and women who constantly strive to be two steps ahead of cyber-threats of all kinds. We are already working on how to secure the world against the upcoming, 6^th generation of attacks, and I am confident that we will continue to develop the most comprehensive technologies to enable everyone to safely enjoy the benefits of connectivity.”

Watch the video of Gil Shwed at the Closing Bell ceremony here: