Hybrid Mesh and the Check Point Infinity Platform

Gartner has recently recognized Check Point as a Representative Vendor for Hybrid Mesh Firewall Platforms (“Hybrid Mesh”). This blog explores what hybrid mesh is and how the Check Point Infinity Platform delivers on the promise of a cyber security strategy that lets you meet tomorrow’s needs with confidence.

Hybrid is the New Norm. How About Your Security?

Hybrid workforces, clouds and networks are here to stay, as almost a third of full-time employees work in a hybrid model while nearly half of workloads reside in the cloud. Each of these environments requires its own type of firewall:

• Virtual firewalls secure private clouds
• Native cloud firewalls protect publicly-hosted workloads
• Firewall-as-a-service secures remote work
• Hardware firewalls filter both perimeter north south and data center east-west traffic.

When Best-of-Breed is Not the Best Approach

As IT and security teams know all too well, this best-of-breed approach results in an unwieldy arsenal of tools that further lead to management complexity, high maintenance overhead, fragmented visibility, inconsistent policy enforcement, procurement fatigue and varying levels of security effectiveness across the IT infrastructure. To address the complexity of managing the security for so many different environments, each integrated with different controls and systems (think CNAPP, SD-WAN and IoT), Gartner has proposed a new framework for managing enterprise cyber security called Hybrid Mesh Firewall Platforms.

So What is a Hybrid Mesh Firewall Platform?

In its inaugural Market Guide for Hybrid Mesh Firewall Platforms, Gartner provides the following definition: “A hybrid mesh firewall (HMF) platform is a multideployment firewall including hardware and virtual appliance, cloud-based, and as-a-service models with a unified cloud-based management plane. It is built to support hybrid environments and evolving use cases by offering mature continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline integration, native cloud integration, and advanced threat prevention capabilities extending to Internet of Things (IoT) devices and DNS-based attacks.”

Key Hybrid Mesh Benefits

The main benefits to adopting a hybrid mesh approach are:

• Lower management overheads – thanks to unified cloud-based management that supports different
  types of firewalls
• Agility to transition workloads to any environment – through native support and robust
  integration with public and private clouds and (CI/CD) pipelines
• Improved security posture – resulting from consistent policy enforcement and threat prevention
  across hybrid environments, as well as the facility to support zero trust initiatives
• Agile licensing models that simplify procurement

How Check Point Infinity Enables a Hybrid Mesh Strategy

The Check Point Infinity Platform is a cloud-delivered, AI-powered platform that sets a new standard in enterprise cyber security strategy, delivering a Hybrid Mesh Firewall that lets you meet the needs of tomorrow with confidence. Offering the agility to scale security anywhere, and threat prevention that is second to none, Check Point Infinity protects diverse environments across hybrid networks, workforces and clouds–all from a unified management console with a flexible and predictable pricing model. Here’s what sets us apart:

Security that is second to none

• Boasting the #1 catch rate for malware and phishing – Check Point leads the industry in blocking never-before-seen phishing and, as well as ransomware and DNS attacks.
• In less than 2 seconds, fresh threat intel is shared globally across enforcement points in clouds, networks and devices for up-to-the-moment protection.

Agility to Scale Security Anywhere

Check Point Infinity lets you scale security wherever it’s needed:

• Hybrid Networks

• • • Support ever-growing bandwidth needs as applications expand from on-prem
      datacenters to the cloud using high-throughput on-prem firewalls with Quantum Gateways
    • Drive efficient use of on-prem and cloud infrastructure so you can repurpose
      resources where they are needed most using gateway orchestration with Quantum Maestro

• Hybrid Workforce

• • • Deliver full mesh any-to-any connectivity with zero trust layer 3 to layer 7 FWaaS and support for agentless access with Harmony SASE

• Hybrid Clouds

• • • Dynamically enforce policy per workload type thanks to cloud- and virtualization awareness with CloudGuard Network

Unified AI-Powered Cloud-Delivered Platfrom

The Infinity Platform provides a single unified console for managing policy and controls across all enforcement points, consolidated event visibility and security operations, and generative AI assistants that reduce the time required to complete common tasks by up to 90%.

Flexible, Predictable Pricing

The Infinity Platform Agreement offers an all-inclusive per user per annum pricing model that includes all security hardware, software, subscriptions, 24×7 support and professional services, allowing organizations to transition between different enforcement points as needed throughout the year.

Get your complimentary copy of the 2024 Gartner® Market Guide for Hybrid Mesh Firewall Platforms¹
¹Gartner® Market Guide for Hybrid Mesh Firewall Platforms, by Rajpreet Kaur, Adam Hils, 16 January 2024. Gartner is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s Research & Advisory organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

To learn more about deploying a hybrid mesh framework with the Infinity Platform, visit www.checkpoint.com/solutions/hybrid-mesh-firewall/

Hybrid Mesh Firewall Architecture with Check Point Infinity Platform