R81 is now available in Smart-1 Cloud

[Anat_Eytan-Davi]

Every newly created environment in Smart-1 Cloud is now deployed with R81 version.

New! With R81, we are introducing a unified login method – no need to create a dedicated SmartConsole admin, simply login into SmartConsole with the infinity portal credentials.

Upgrades of Smart-1 Cloud production environments will start during January, 

I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a happy new year and stay safe.

Happy New Year,

Anat.

[the_rock]

Happy New Year as well. Personally, I would not bother with R81 yet...I installed it in the lab and its nothing special. Plus, all sales people are telling customers not to upgrade to it yet, so its pretty clear they are not too enthusiastic about it either 🙂

Cheers!

[Kim_Moberg]

Personalet I would go for R81. 
Major features are concurrent policy install on multiple gateways and the new Infinity threat Prevention.

[the_rock]

Ok, we all have different opinions : ). I dont care much for Infinity threat prevention, as I dont find it useful at all and as far as policy install on multiple gateways, not too much of a selling point either really. Im sure there will be so many bugs with the product, like usual.

Happy New Year!!

[HristoGrigorov]

I am interested to know as to why do you think Infinity TP is not useful at all ? Because from what I read about it is seems to be quite useful actually. Assuming it works as advertised of course. 

[JozkoMrkvicka]

Still no MDS support ?

[the_rock]

I dont find Infinity TP useful at all, because it reminds me of tailored safe in R80.xx...so, CP logic is, lets ask customers to use tailor safe ips, which totally defeats the purpose of even applying optimized ips profile, which by the way is what TAC recommends. I even had a case with escalations about it and they could not provide logical answer to it, because there is none :). No offense, but, if you tell me to use optimized ips profile, which is great, then why in the world would I need tailored safe to make it more complicated? This infinity TP reminds me of that...anyway, just a personal opinion. Hopefully Im proven wrong, but so far, I had 3 customers give me exact same feedback.

[Kim_Moberg]

Hi

I am not sure if this is the right thread to comments on R81 and features.

I was using MaaS now Smart-Cloud and found it very smart and maybe a logical way to go for those who doesn't want to operate they own SMS solution on-prem and take care of backup etc.

My only concern as with cloud in general are how fast can Check Point respond when some issues occurs or I need help? Now it is their administrators and not me that have to tweak the installation.
How can I continue to work as EA customers when it is in Smart-cloud? I know this feature is on its way but still.

I have been a EA customer for many years now and I say I have always been in safe hands when it comes to upgrades. 
Every time we did EA upgrades of course they haven't always went good but EA team and RnD have always taken it very seriously when it comes to bugs or errors. I had more good successes than reverse EA upgrades but latest version are very stable in our environment. All our gateways now runs R81 Take 10.

What I have seen though are partners who are very conservative in their upgrades and typically waits and ends up with 1-2 versions after the latest official releases before upgrading their customers installations. 
I do understand why if one follows Change Management from ITIL or any other process release management flows. What I typically I have seen it has been related to Partners what's to know the bugs and maybe quick fixes before they begin upgrading customers installations.

I wouldn't be afraid of upgrading my SMS to R81 Take 10 if I was a customer. Performance and feature wise. it just works and on top of it in Smart-Cloud please consider it. I believe it will bring good experience overall for customers. 

In regards to Tailored Safe profiles are based on optimized profile and basically it is moves IPS packages from Detect to Prevent if it doesn't exist any hits in your logs. I found it very useful and I didn't have any negative blocks in our environments.

I don't know about TAC but they only relate to what is known and trained in and if they experience is not to use it I think there is a missing link between RnD and TAC support. That might be internal training. I think as soon a tool has a SK it should be fully supported by TAC and no just RnD.
I would recommend to use this community for questions for Tailored Safe. Guys who developed this tool are following the threads and are able to respond to how it works. Maybe @Oren_Koren or @Adi_Ikan can assist your here. 

I wish for ITP profile to include Tailored Safe so the IPS packages is tailored to your environment. With the ITP profile you would have the mental process of letting go of control and slowly accept Check Point would know better on how to protect your environment. For me it works.

As a Check Point Partner it is now less work for them to sell services to their customers. I believe this is new world for Partners to accept and maybe specialize one self in other Check Point product areas.

Happy New Year and hope for better times in 2021.