Announcing CheckMates Pro!

[PhoneBoy]

At CPX360 Las Vegas, we made a big CheckMates-related announcement: CheckMates Pro!

The purpose of the CheckMates Pro program is to reward our most active community members.

This is tracked through the use of points that are awarded for taking actions consistent with being an active community member.

This includes, but is not limited to:

• Originating content on CheckMates that people participate in (either like, comment, vote on, mark as helpful, etc)
  • You are given points for both originating the content and activity that occurs on it.
• Tag content
• Mark replies as helpful or correct
• Follow a space or person
• Share content
• Being given badges/awards by other users

If you accumulate at least 250 points in a calendar year (tracked from the date you joined CheckMates), you can claim the following benefits:

• A one year evaluation license where you can learn about the power of Check Point Infinity first-hand in your lab
  • This is an extended version of the "All-in-one" Eval you can request through UserCenter today, enabling the ability to use most Security Gateway and Management products.
• A quarterly meeting with Check Point R&D on a topic area of your choosing

Terms and Conditions:

• Must have earned at least 250 points per calendar year of membership on CheckMates.
• Must reapply for benefit each year.
• We reserve the right to modify the terms/conditions at any time.

If you qualify and wish to redeem this benefit, please email us at checkmates@checkpoint.com. Please include the User Center account # you wish to apply the benefit to. Requests can be submitted until April 1st

[VCL001]

Sounds like fun! Thanks Dameon

[Gaurav_Pandya]

Hi Dameon,

This is really great initiative.

[Russell_Walker]

Great benefit for the community. Great job! 

Also you were great at CPX360 also.

[SCANSEC_EdesLC]

Very good news. : )

[Efthymios_Pante]

Good news..!!

[Christian_Meye1]

Great Idea, thanks!

[Kaspars_Zibarts]

Absolutely awesome!

[Gregory_Welch1]

I just learned about this.  This is great.  Thanks.  

[Efthymios_Pante]

Thanks for sharing!!

[Vladimir]

Dameon,

Can you list the evals available under this program?

Thank you.

[PhoneBoy]

When we were issuing these licenses, it was the standard "All-in-one" eval, which allows you to eval most gateway/management products.

We are not issuing these licenses currently, but may do so next year.

[Vladimir]

Ouch! I thought it was an ongoing program available at any time.

[PhoneBoy]

It was intended as limited time promotion--one we may repeat next year.

[Hugo_vd_Kooij]

I happen to know that some other vendors have program that qualifies engineers to get their own lab licenses to encourage hands-on experience and have a setup where you can wreck things. At the moment I have these for:

• Barracuda
• Blue Coat (Symantec)
• Trend Micro

This means I have a pretty loaded VMware server but I can tinker with setups as I please and try concepts or do simple replication of issues.

I think a similar program would benefit Check Point as well. So any engineer who updates her/his CCSE and works for a partner would be able to get a Demo license set for the term of the certification.

[Gaurav_Pandya]

Good Idea..

[Vladimir]

I am in a complete agreement with you and would take it one step further: in addition to the free license, it should also carry a support contract, so that SRs could be raised on the issues discovered in the lab environments.

The more of those we'll get assistance with, the less production cases will be hitting TAC later on.

[PhoneBoy]

Good ideas here.

We are looking at relaunching the program in 2019, as I said.

It probably won't happen until after CPX is completed.

[Olavi_Lentso]

Hi,

Do you have any further information by now, is the program going to be relaunched in this year?

[Hugo_vd_Kooij]

my lab is running near the end of it's 1 year NFR by now. (12-MAR-2019)

Just curious if I have to go back to the 1 month renewal cycle.

[PhoneBoy]

I suspect we'll re-announce this program once we get out of the blast zone of the community migration.

[Daniel_Taney]

I had the same question and am commenting mostly in the hopes of getting updates when additional responses get added to this thread  

[Hugo_vd_Kooij]

Just curious if there are any plans to renew this program.

[Nick_Doropoulos]

How can we see how many points we have accumulated?

[Daniel_Taney]

@PhoneBoy I was just wondering if you had heard any updates on whether or not this offering was "renewable" after our 1st year ran out?

Thanks!

[PhoneBoy]

Nothing at the moment @Daniel_Taney, I believe it is still under discussion.