Software Defined Something...Reflections on CPX 2014

It is an unusually grey morning in Barcelona.  Having left behind the hottest temperatures of the year in the UK at 27 degrees, I’m wondering if it wasn’t just the taxi driver who went the wrong way last night but the pilot of the plane too.

To explain that note…

I arrived late in Barcelona with my Russian companion for the trip; a little tired but hoping to have a sneaky pint once safely arrived at the hotel.  Having been assured by the taxi driver (despite some trepidation) that there was “only one Hotel Princesa” in Barcelona, we had put our faith in him.  It was, alas, misplaced.  For there are two Princess Hotels – the Hotel Princess at one end of Avenue Diagonal where we were supposed to be and then the hotel we were actually taken to, the Hotel Princess Sofia, almost 8km straight across the Avenue Diagonal (yes on the exact same road to enable the confusion) the other side of Barcelona.  Having tried to check in and figured out we were at the wrong hotel and that the taxi driver was long gone, the concierge was nice enough to call us a cab to the other Hotel Princesa.  I didn’t want a pint, I just wanted to go to bed!

Back to the next morning.  There was an air of confusion it seemed as the delegates gathered for CPX 2014.  Was it the weather and general lack of sunshine?  Or was it that they were trying to figure out what Software Defined Protection is?  Well to varying degrees, the two days ahead would represent some illumination on both fronts.

As is tradition, the conference began with some completely unrelated interpretive dance.  To compound the weirdness this year though, this was interspersed with videos of Gil Schwed and Amnon Bar-Lev encased in futuristic cubes and delivering one word statements about the future of security.  On top of that, the video (which seemed to be playing the music track too) got all jerky and juddery.  Fair play to the dancers for improvising and slowing down their movements but somebody at Check Point forgot to pay their Netflix bill.

Onto the presentations then and the opening address by Gil Schwed, Check Point CEO.  Whether he was proud of seeing himself on video in a dystopian vision of the future or just more excited than usual at what was to come, he certainly had a spring in his step.  I myself was looking forward to seeing what SDP (Software Defined Protection) was all about.  I had purposely ignored everything I could possibly have read prior to this event about SDP.  I wanted to come here to CPX with an open mind and find out if they really were revolutionising security all over again or if it was just another vendor to jump on this year’s buzz word.  Or rather buzz words, plural.  For it seems that if you want to show innovation this year all your marketing needs can be met by saying what you do (e.g. Protection or Networking) and simply adding two words in front – Software Defined.

 

Sometimes in technology (and particularly in Security) things snowball to the point of absurdity.  In the midst of all this, very good concepts can be lost.  Like a song you loved when you first heard it but now it’s been played to death.  So what did Gil have to say?  He did indeed touch on SDP.  He was clearly excited by the concept and reinventing security all over again.  He talked about the 3 layers of infrastructure behind SDP:

The management layer, the control layer and the enforcement layer.  All things that, on the face of it, exist already today within the Check Point portfolio.  Gil alludes to more detail around this in the sessions to follow over the next two days but in essence the only thing they’re really changing is the management to accommodate this new model.

The control layer is basically software blades, plus Threat Intelligence (ok so there are some developments on that front too).

Then the enforcement layer is simply a Check Point firewall.  Or a Check Point virtual firewall.  Or a Check Point endpoint agent.  And so on.

So are Check Point simply that ahead of the game or are they trying to capitalise on the latest craze and fit their messaging around it?  This became my new aim for the next two days.  That and eventually getting that pint in somewhere.

 

In Part 2……Check Point announce two major new services and I get more insight into SDP!

Read Part 2 by clicking here