The CheckMates Blog

Welcome to "This Week in CheckMates," your weekly highlight reel for all things CheckMates!
Past and future posts will be available here: The CheckMates Blog
To have these updates show up in your preferred RSS reader add the following URL: The CheckMates Blog RSS Feed
See also our social media accounts and our podcast (RSS Feed)

Community Highlights for 2019

Rather than feature posts from this quiet week due to the Christmas holiday, we will highlight a few posts that were popular during 2019.

Frequently Visited Posts

• My Top 3 CLI Commands
• First Packet Isn't SYN 
• R80.x Ports Used for Communications by Various Check Point Modules 
• VPN Troubleshooting Commands
• R80.x Security Gateway Architecture (Logical Packet Flow)

Frequently Kudoed Posts

• R80.x Architecture and Performance Tuning Link Collection 
• R80.40 Early Availability Program
• Gaia: Easily Execute CLI Commands on All Gateways Simultaneously
• Policy Layers in R80.x
• FW Monitor Supertool

Active Topics

• SMB - New Product Announcement - 1500 Series Security Gateways
• One-liner for Address Spoofing Troubleshooting 
• R80.20 MTU and SecureXL Problem 
• Problem in facing SIC Management to Branch office firewall 

Upcoming Events

We are now maintaining our event calendar in Google Calendar
You can browse our calendar of events here: CheckMates Calendar 

@_Val_, @Shay_Levin, and I are busy preparing for the upcoming CPX 360 events.
We will post upcoming CheckMates Live events for 2020 in the near future.

If you would like a CheckMates Live event in your area, get in contact with us: checkmates@checkpoint.com 

Welcome to "This Week in CheckMates," your weekly highlight reel for all things CheckMates!
Past and future posts will be available here: The CheckMates Blog
To have these updates show up in your preferred RSS reader add the following URL: The CheckMates Blog RSS Feed
See also our social media accounts and our podcast (RSS Feed)

Community Highlights

Here are the threads to watch from the last week:

Software Releases

• R80.10 Ongoing JHF Take 259
• Gaia Healthcheck Script v7.08

Videos

• HTTPS Inspection Best Practices TechTalk
• NSS Labs Breach Prevention Report
• AWS - Automated Remediation via Dome9 CloudBots

Other Topics

• Check Point 1500 Appliance FAQ
• Global Policies and Stealth Rule
• How to Monitor Command Input in Expert Mode
• 23900, R80.30 Upgrade, and SMT
• Performance Tuning Tip: User Mode Firewall vs Kernel Mode Firewall
• Why Can a Policy Server Receive Logs 

Upcoming Events

We are now maintaining our event calendar in Google Calendar
You can browse our calendar of events here: CheckMates Calendar 

@_Val_, @Shay_Levin, and I are busy preparing for the upcoming CPX 360 events.
We will post upcoming CheckMates Live events for 2020 in the near future.

If you would like a CheckMates Live event in your area, get in contact with us: checkmates@checkpoint.com 

Cloud security is arguably the hottest topic today. To help you navigate the vast and turbulent sea of cloud security, we introduce a new space at CheckMates: Cloud Security Posture Advisory.

Do not miss the first article in this space:  AWS - Secure Your Cloud - Ensure no security groups allow ingress from 0.0.0.0/0 to SSH (TCP:22), with a new How-To video for the matter.

Welcome to "This Week in CheckMates," your weekly highlight reel for all things CheckMates!
Past and future posts will be available here: The CheckMates Blog
To have these updates show up in your preferred RSS reader add the following URL: The CheckMates Blog RSS Feed
See also our social media accounts and our podcast (RSS Feed)

Community Highlights

Here are the threads to watch from the last week:

Product Updates

• Endpoint/SandBlast Agent E82.00 Early Availability for macOS Catalina
• SmartConsole R80.20 Build 88 
• New Blink Image for R80.30 GA Take 200 + JHF Take 111 

Code Hub

• Coming in R80.40 Management: Batch Objects Commands 
• Limiting API Calls

Remote Access

• Remote Access from Linux CentOS
• Check Point VPN with Microsoft Two-Factor Authentication

Other Topics

• Pull Text from a Managed Gateway Using Established Trust (SIC) 
• R80.30 Packet Flow
• Disabling Physical Interfaces in VSX
• Where Do I Find the Exported Excel Files from SmartView? 

Upcoming Events

We are now maintaining our event calendar in Google Calendar
You can browse our calendar of events here: CheckMates Calendar 

At the moment, we are planning for events in 2020 and preparing for the upcoming CPX 360 events where @_Val_, @Shay_Levin, and I will be! 

If you would like a CheckMates Live event in your area, get in contact with us: checkmates@checkpoint.com 

Welcome to "This Week in CheckMates," your weekly highlight reel for all things CheckMates!
Past and future posts will be available here: The CheckMates Blog
To have these updates show up in your preferred RSS reader add the following URL: The CheckMates Blog RSS Feed
See also our social media accounts and our podcast (RSS Feed)

Welcome Shay!

@Shay_Levin has just joined the CheckMates team! Among many other initiatives, he'll be doing local user groups in the Asia-Pacific region. 

Community Highlights

Here are the threads to watch from the last week:

Product Updates

• R80.20 JHF Ongoing Take 127
• R80.30 JHF GA Take 111

Code Hub Discussions

• R80.40 API v1.6 Changelog
• Mass Modification of all User Accounts Expiration Dates

Other Topics

• SmartConsole Undo Changes Without Discarding Session 
• Replace Upgrade Cluster
• UserCheck Block Page Content Change
• R80.x Performance Tuning Tip: Elephant Flows (Heavy Connections)
• HTTP Blocked, but HTTPS Allowed Even Though Log Says Reject
• Asynchronous Fragments on a Firewall in Bridge Mode 
• What's Wrong With My Regex to Block C2 Traffic?

Upcoming Events

We are now maintaining our event calendar in Google Calendar
You can browse our calendar of events here: CheckMates Calendar 
Here's where you can find @Valeri_Loukine and I over the next few weeks:

• 11th December 2019: CheckMates Cyber Range in Denver with @PhoneBoy 
• 12th December 2019: CheckMates Live Dublin

If you would like a CheckMates Live event in your area, get in contact with us: checkmates@checkpoint.com 

Welcome to "This Week in CheckMates," your weekly highlight reel for all things CheckMates!
Past and future posts will be available here: The CheckMates Blog
To have these updates show up in your preferred RSS reader add the following URL: The CheckMates Blog RSS Feed
See also our social media accounts and our podcast (RSS Feed)

Check Point for Beginners

We made a few changes to the landing page for our Check Point for Beginners section, which will hopefully make it easier to find the content you're looking for. Your feedback is definitely appreciated! More content will be coming in 2020 as well.

Community Highlights

Here are the threads to watch from the last week:

• R80.30 Jumbo Hotfix New Ongoing Take 111
• Endpoint Security/SandBlast Agent E82.10 
• URL Filtering versus Anti-Virus versus Anti-Bot
• Impact of Rulebase Size on Gateway Performance
• R80.30 with 3.10 Kernel on VMware Servers 
• SmartView and Custom Actions
• Endpoint Security VPN Only on Company-Owned Devices
• /30 and /26 to ISP Without a Router 
• HTTPS Inspection Documentation for R80.30
• Jumbo Hotfix Accumulators, Jumbo Hotfixes, Takes, Keeping it Straight 
• Managing SMB Devices and Fetching Policy with SmartLSM

Upcoming Events

We are now maintaining our event calendar in Google Calendar
You can browse our calendar of events here: CheckMates Calendar 
Here's where you can find @Valeri_Loukine and I over the next few weeks:

• 2nd December 2019: CheckMates Live Omaha with @PhoneBoy 
• 3rd December 2019:
  • CheckMates Live Des Moines with @PhoneBoy 
  • CheckMates Live Dusseldorf with @Val_Loukine 
• 4th December 2019: CheckMates Live Kansas City with @PhoneBoy 
• 5th December 2019: CheckMates Live Springfield with @PhoneBoy 
• 6th December 2019: CheckMates Live St. Louis with @PhoneBoy
• 12th December 2019: CheckMates Live Paris with @Val_Loukine 

If you would like a CheckMates Live event in your area, get in contact with us: checkmates@checkpoint.com