Smart 1 Cloud

[RemoteUser]

Why should I consider switching to S1C? What benefits does it offer?

[Chris_Atkinson]

For context how are you currently managing your gateways and what platforms are those?

This will help us articulate the differences / benefits to your current system.

[RemoteUser]

I manage gateways through S1C, but that's not the point.
If a customer asks me why they should switch from on-premise management to S1C, what are the benefits?
Are there any known differences?

[Chris_Atkinson · Accepted solution]

Many of the advantages are as you would expect for SaaS i.e. no patching, elasticity etc.

Namely for those that prefer not to manage the underlying infrastructure they can focus on what's important.

Key Benefits

Always the Latest Security Management - Newest features automatically updated in a unified management platform.

Zero Maintenance - No need to monitor or for back up operations in your security management server.

On-demand Expansion - Seamlessly expand capacity with support of more gateways and storage.

[D_TK]

like most people, i have policy management and logging\smart event on different on-prem VMs.  I would be interested in moving only the logging to the cloud while keeping policy management on prem - is this an option?  

[the_rock]

Very good question...Im not aware of any clients I deal with doing so, but maybe possible.

Andy

[Chris_Atkinson]

"Infinity Events" is the SaaS option to explore.

[the_rock · Accepted solution]

Hey bud,

I agree 100% with what Chris stated. I recall once customer asked me the same question and I made some points about it, but I am fairly sure when I told them the following, they felt very comfortable with it. I said something along the lines "Ok, put it this way...say knock on wood someone in your company makes a big mistake and mgmt server is inaccessible and location is 1 or 2 hours drive away, you dont have a choice but to get someone there physically. With S1C, yes, its true there is no ssh access, but it would literally never go down and if someone was to make a mistake in the policy, its super easy to fix it, since you can do it from literally any computer with Internet access from anywhere in the world"

They ended up getting the subscription and they always thank me now because of it. I can tell you it came a long way since 2020, when I originally started working with it. I love it now.

Andy

[PhoneBoy · Accepted solution]

As for the differences, review the Known Limitations for Smart-1 Cloud here: https://sc1.checkpoint.com/documents/Infinity_Portal/WebAdminGuides/EN/Check-Point-SmartCloud-Admin-...

[Alex-]

It's great for managed services for instance, amongst other benefits and considerations on the known limitations.

For some customers, everything is in the cloud or SaaS-ified, so running a local VM just for management was a non-starter.

Others ask us to manage the security part and it can conflict with local server deployments which would then involve other teams or third-parties.

With Smart-1 Cloud, here's what we offer to these customers:

1. No local infrastructure beyond the gateways
2. Managed Services without the hassle of VPN'ing into some DC just to start the console
3. Backup and upgrade strategy outsourced to Check Point
4. Easier integration with third-party SOC and whatnot
5. Log storage tiers that can scale based on usage
6. Direct integration with identity providers, MFA and so on for tenant access
7. Access to all of our customers tenants by the ease of a drop-down list
8. The streamed R82 Smart Console is pretty awesome, the web Smart Console is already very good

And some others. While some like to control all of this on-site, there are customers who demand a minimal approach and agility from their integrators. Before Smart-1 Cloud, this was way more cumbersome to offer.

[the_rock]

Well said @Alex-