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The CheckMates Blog

Here's where we let you know what's going on with the CheckMates Community.

PhoneBoy
Admin
Admin

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)

CheckMates Takes Bratislava

Valeri Loukine‌ and I did our largest CheckMates event ever in Bratislava where we had 100 people!

 

 

 

Community Highlights

Here are the conversations worth watching in the community:

 

https://community.checkpoint.com/community/about-checkmates/blog/2019/03/07/the-new-checkmates-is-al...

It should come on the 12th if all goes to plan.

 

R80.20 Use Cases TechTalk 

We had another TechTalk on R80.20 and had a LOT of Q&A.

 

Your opinion matters! 

We're asking you how you use mobile messaging apps, which will help us provide better products and services to you.

 

AWS Management Server and separate Logging Server 

There's an issue with the default Security Groups that requires manual adjustment.

 

Cluster XL - Interface Preference 

Can you ignore a specific interface in ClusterXL (meaning not cause a failover if it dies)?

 

Migrating the Functionality of a dedicated Proxy Server to Check Point 

TL;DR: We're not a proxy server.

 

Script to check health on SMB 

A new community development Smiley Happy

 

Identity Detection - Best option? 

Discusses the various options, and there's no one size fits all solution even in a single environment Smiley Happy

 

HTTPS drop in R80.10 

 

The workaround the community came up with is now documented in SK, even.

 

 

A feature many of you have been waiting for is now available.

 

Upcoming Events

We are now maintaining our event calendar in Google Calendar.

You can browse our calendar of events here: CheckMates Calendar 

Upcoming events include:

We are currently in the planning phases for our 2019 events.

If you want one in your area, get in contact with us: [email protected] 

Read more
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PhoneBoy
Admin
Admin

We expect to launch our new CheckMates platform on the 12th of March 2019!

This requires us to set the existing community to READ ONLY so the content and users can be migrated to the new platform.

This is expected to happen no later than 01:00 CET on the 12th of March, or 5pm Pacific Daylight Time on the 11th.

The migration process is expected to take no more than 24 hours.

Assuming all goes well, you will see the new community live with the URL https://community.checkpoint.com.

When the new community launches, you will notice a few changes and see the following benefits:

  • Overhauled Site Design
    • The existing platform has a number of limitations that made it difficult to highlight or find the most relevant and recent content. Lithium is far more flexible in this regard, and you will see a new front page that should be significantly easier to navigate and find what you’re looking for. 
  • Private messaging
    • In the current platform, in order to send a private message to someone (say, an employee), the person you wish to contact has to be following you. In Lithium, this will be enabled for most established users by default.
  • Custom Usernames
    • Due to the integration with UserCenter, usernames in the current platform have to be a UUID string. Which, quite frankly, isn’t very user friendly. In Lithium, this will not be required and everyone will get to choose their own username! For existing users, a default will be assigned on migration, but you will be able to change it. And yes, PhoneBoy will be PhoneBoy (finally!).
  • More Benefits for Active Users
    • In addition to the changes in ranks and badges previously discussed, we will be able to grant specific permissions and benefits to people based on achievements in the community. The exact benefits we will provide at what levels will be determined at a later date.
  • Better Service to the Community
    • Lithium provides improvements to many things most of you won’t see. Rest assured, these improvements will allow us to provide better service to you, our user community!

Read more
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PhoneBoy
Admin
Admin

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 conversations worth watching in the community:

 

New Software Releases/EAs:

 

#CPX360 Slides 2019 

We turned around the slides and videos for CPX 360 in record time! The partner-specific content is now also available to partners.

 

Check Point for Beginners - Typical Config Mistakes 

We've had a couple threads on this. See also: Top human fails to avoid 

 

SmartConsole potential CPM issues 

In this case, the issue was resolved by generating a new SIC certificate (not to be confused with resetting the SIC ICA).

 

Which method would you recommend to upgrade from R80 to R80.20? 

migrate export/import is probably the better approach.

 

Are any of the MDS limitations in MDS R80.20 are addressed in R80.30EA? 

TL;DR: no, but we are working on it. 

 

R80.30 cheat sheet - ClusterXL 

Another good one from Heiko Ankenbrand‌!

 

Use Sandblast API on Security Gateway 

You can't do it on a regular Security Gateway. 

 

 

If you're struggling with this, this thread should help.

 

Upcoming Events

Due to the upcoming change to Lithium, we are maintaining our event calendar in Google Calendar.

You can browse our calendar of events here: CheckMates Calendar 

Upcoming events include:

We are currently in the planning phases for our 2019 events.

If you want one in your area, get in contact with us: [email protected] 

Read more
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PhoneBoy
Admin
Admin

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)

CheckMates Does CPX360, Vienna Style!

Our CPX 360 show in Vienna was our largest to date with over 4000 customers, partners, and employees in attendance!

 

 

Here I am with James Alliband‌ and Bien Nguyen‌ right before the keynotes:

 

 

Unlike in the Vegas and Bangkok events, CheckMates did not have a booth on the expo floor this time around.

Instead, we had a lounge outside of our breakout track, which proved to be quite popular!

(Great idea, Amit Sharon‌!)

 

 

 

The CheckMates track itself was quite popular as well, particularly Danny Jung‌'s session:

 

 

There was quite a lot to see at this years CPX 360 events!

 

 

Community Highlights

Here are the conversations worth watching in the community:

 

New Software Releases

 

How to apply QoS on a User for restricting Bandwidth? 

Came up here: Limit bandwidth. R77.30  

 

Allowing custom site with external hosted images 

Tricky when taking a whitelist approach and the content is hosted on a CDN.

 

SmartConsole | New 'Group Membership' Feature 

A few of you asked for this feature. It's been added in R80.20.M2.

 

Expert command of Security Management Server to show Initialization Status 

Remember this one.

 

Issues with IE and SandBlast Extension; GPO deployment may be helpful? 

These issues are fixed in E80.92.

 

Can the default be changed for the logging time period results? 

In SmartView, yes.

 

Managing a gateway over VPN 

You don't want to do this.

 

Enable DPD on R80.20 

Some confusion about how this works.

 

R77.20.85 performance issue on centrally managed SMB 

Some additional issues we're tracking in this thread.

 

Is CP planning to support Load-Sharing in future releases? 

It was not added to R80.20. We plan to have it later in 2019.

 

How do I change the https certificate for Sandblast API? 

It uses the SIC certificate, which means...you can't change it.

 

Upcoming Events

Due to the upcoming change to Lithium, we are maintaining our event calendar in Google Calendar.

You can browse our calendar of events here: CheckMates Calendar 

Upcoming events include:

We are currently in the planning phases for our 2019 events.

If you want one in your area, get in contact with us: [email protected] 

Read more
5 2 1,744
PhoneBoy
Admin
Admin

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)

Vienna Calling!

You can bet the CheckMates team will be at CPX 360 in Vienna!

Meanwhile, Kishin Fatnani‌ took a great photo of a bunch of us in Vegas!

Posted: https://community.checkpoint.com/community/infinity-general/blog/2019/02/14/cpx360 

 

 

Community Highlights

Here are the conversations worth watching in the community:

 

Smart Console: Packet Mode - Possible Bug? 

Yes, theres a bug there, but thanks to the community, we'll see an improvement!

 

New in Developers (Code Hub)

 

Lower number of CoreXL instances in ClusterXL HA

The number of CoreXL on all cluster members must match or clustering won't work.

 

Application Control Bug!? 

Not really a bug, but a misunderstanding of how the policy works on SMB appliances.

 

ConnectControl / Logical Servers within same subnet 

Have to admit, this one stumped me, even!

 

Limited Permission Profile 

While it's not possible to limit who can read a specific policy, you can restrict what logs they can see (in R80.x at least).

 

How to check debug command ? 

Given there are a number of different ways to debug, there is no simple answer to this question.

 

R77.20.85 performance issue on centrally managed SMB 

The fixed version of firmware was released on 11 February. See: R77.20.85 for Small and Medium Business Appliances 

 

Log all the rules on R80.x 

Including the implied rules.

 

 

Rename the files. We are planning a fix for this.

 

Upcoming Events

Due to the upcoming change to Lithium, we are maintaining our event calendar in Google Calendar.

You can browse our calendar of events here: CheckMates Calendar 

Upcoming events include:

We are currently in the planning phases for our 2019 events.

If you want one in your area, get in contact with us: [email protected] 

Read more
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PhoneBoy
Admin
Admin

Welcome to "This Week in CheckMates," your weekly highlight reel for all things CheckMates!

Past and future posts will be available here: About CheckMates

To have these updates show up in your preferred RSS reader add the following URL: About CheckMates RSS Feed 

See also our social media accounts and our podcast (RSS Feed😞

CheckMates at CPX 360 Las Vegas

Between running the CheckMates sessions and other tasks, I didn't get as many photos of the team.

That said, a lot of us was there.

Personally, I was very blinged up during the event:

 

 

For those wondering, yes, we will have those pins in Vienna!

And we'll have these shirts (modeled by Toni Ponder‌):

 

 

In addition to the festivities of CPX, there was a gathering for those of us who had been at Check Point 10 or more years.

Personally, I just past the 20 year mark between my time at Nokia and Check Point.

Plaques were given, and I managed to get a picture with our CEO Gil Shwed:

 

 

And my partner in crime Moti Sagey‌ gave me a brief shoutout during his session:

 

Community Highlights

Here are the conversations worth watching in the community:

 

https://community.checkpoint.com/community/infinity-general/blog/2019/02/07/r8030-public-ea-program-... 

Are you participating in this yet?

 

https://community.checkpoint.com/community/infinity-general/blog/2019/02/05/r8020-new-jumbo-hotfix-t... 

Meanwhile, the latest GA jumbo hotfix is available.

 

Will (Smart)Workflow come back? 

We still plan to bring the features of SmartWorkflow back.

 

Gateway logs on Smartlog after SMS outages 

Here's a way to get the logs flowing again.

 

What is the procedure to Migrate firewall from one management server to another? 

Another oldie but goodie.

 

PAT/NAT to routed subnet? 

One use case for Address Translation.

 

Domain Object issue on R77.30 

These objects work a lot better on R80.20.

 

How to block some https sites? 

If you want to block (or allow) access to a specific site via HTTPS, this thread might be helpful. 

 

Upcoming Events

Due to the upcoming change to Lithium, we have migrated our upcoming event calendar to Google Calendar.

You can browse our calendar of events here: CheckMates Calendar 

Upcoming events include:

We are currently in the planning phases for our 2019 events.

If you want one in your area, get in contact with us: [email protected] 

Read more
6 0 969
PhoneBoy
Admin
Admin

Welcome to "This Week in CheckMates," your weekly highlight reel for all things CheckMates!

Past and future posts will be available here: About CheckMates

To have these updates show up in your preferred RSS reader add the following URL: About CheckMates RSS Feed 

See also our social media accounts and our podcast (RSS Feed😞

CheckMates Migration to Lithium Platform

In case you are not aware, we are planning to migrate the platform we are using for CheckMates from Jive to Lithium.

I have written several posts on this recently:

We are nearing the time when the migration will take place, which we expect to happen during February.

Once the schedule is finalized, we will be sure to communicate it.

Community Highlights

Here are the conversations worth watching in the community:

R80.30 Early Availability Program is started! 

The update is that R80.30 Public EA is here! We plan to release this quarter. That said, more private EAs will help us release it faster!

Can't connect to management server via SmartDashboard 

This problem keeps coming up, particularly in fresh-installed R77.30 and earlier systems, for example in this thread: Problem with cluster access 75.40 VS . The above thread explains how to resolve the issue.

Adding members to a group (via CLI) 

An older thread where a more clever answer was posted.

Class names available for use with the "show-generic-objects" API command 

One way to find this information out.

smartlog too many logs:Non Compliant DNS 

A few different suggestions for addressing this issue.

Jumbo Jail - Stuck between installing newer jumbo and uninstalling older one 

Nice workaround for what is a bug.

https://community.checkpoint.com/community/management/visibility-monitoring/blog/2019/01/28/smart-vi... 

What's Infinity, you ask? Now you can see it!

https://community.checkpoint.com/thread/11305-confused-by-manual-nat-rules-kindly-asking-for-clarifi... 

Manual NAT rules for the gateway IP on an SMB appliance don't have an effect, but there's another way...

Upcoming Events

Due to the upcoming change to Lithium, we have migrated our upcoming event calendar to Google Calendar.

You can browse our calendar of events here: CheckMates Calendar 

Upcoming events include:

We are currently in the planning phases for our 2019 events.

If you want one in your area, get in contact with us: [email protected] 

Read more
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PhoneBoy
Admin
Admin

This is one of a series of posts I've done about our upcoming migration of the CheckMates community site to Lithium (from Jive).

Past posts on the topic include:

Now that we've done a couple of dry runs of the migration, I feel pretty confidence the majority of the content will  migrate between the platforms successfully.

That said, there are going to be a handful of items and settings that will not.

This post will attempt to detail those items so you know what to expect.

Events

Lithium does not have an "events" module/content type the way Jive does.

Going forward, we are posting our events on a public Google Calendar, which the site will display in the sidebar on the main page.

We will also have a blog for Upcoming Events that will contain the same information as well. 

Polls

Jive allowed users to create polls on numerous topics.

Lithium does not allow this and such posts will either not be migrated or will be migrated with the actual poll removed.

User Bookmarks and Follows

In Jive, you can bookmark and follow users or spaces.

While you can do similar things in Lithium, this information will not be migrated across.

That said, if you bookmarked pages using the native bookmarking feature in your browser, old URLs should still continue to work (but will be redirected to their Lithium equivalents).

Videos

While videos that are hosted externally will be migrated with the rest of the content, videos hosted on CheckMates will initially NOT be migrated.

These videos will be migrated in the coming days/weeks after the launch of the new community site.

Specifically, videos impacted by this include:

  • The R80.x Training Videos
  • TechTalks
  • Some of the How-To Videos

Videos that are hosted externally (e.g. on YouTube) will be available Day 1.

Contents May Shift During Flight

We took this opportunity to restructure the community somewhat.

While the majority of boards will remain unchanged, there is a different structure in place.

We've also added a couple new ones and merged a couple others.

The search function will help you find what you're looking for.

If You Can't Find Something After We Migrate...

There will be a couple options to find it:

  • Archive: Some content, as part of the migration, will be moved to a private archive space. Post-migration, we will review the content and either move it to the correct space or delete it as appropriate.
  • Jive Community in Read-Only: This community you're on right now will be set to Read Only right before the actual migration takes place. We plan to leave this version of the community available for a time on a different URL to handle missing content and migration issues.

We will address these issues on a case-by-case basis. 

Next Steps

We are putting the finishing touches on the site design, which will be a bit different from what we have today.

A select handful of you will be invited by email to have a sneak peek so we can get your feedback.

We are planning to launch the new site during February, with the exact timelines to be finalized in the coming days.

We do plan to post on CheckMates and send out a newsletter shortly before the migration happens with more details about what will happen when and what to expect.

Read more
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PhoneBoy
Admin
Admin

As part of our upcoming migration from a Jive-based community to a Lithium-based one, we are changing up the ranks (because we can/have to) and badges (because we have to). Here are some details about the changes that are being made so you know what to expect post-migration.

Ranks / Levels

In general, ranks/levels are given based on your community activity. In Jive, the rank names were boring names like "Level 10"--defaults that could have been changed at some point, but were not. In Lithium, the default names were even more boring, so we decided to change them to something a little more exciting--names based on precious metals and stones!

The formulas behind the ranks will also change, mostly because Jive and Lithium track different activities different ways. As previously noted, activities in CheckMates to date will be "transferred" and "scored" in Lithium according to the new formulas.

I recently did a check of several individuals with data migrated from Jive to Lithium. The vast majority of users will either be the same or an adjacent rank (one above or one below) as they were in Jive. In a few outlier cases, the rank could be significantly different. For the few outliers we've identified already, we will manually adjust your ranks post-migration. All other cases will be handled by request on a case-by-case basis.

Regardless, all activity going forward will be scored and ranked using the new formuals.

Passive Ranks (for people who don't post on CheckMates):

  • New Member!
  • Onlooker
  • Bystander
  • Beholder
  • Spectator
  • Bookworm

Active Ranks (for people who do post on CheckMates):

  • Ivory (Level 1)
  • Iron
  • Nickel
  • Copper
  • Bronze
  • Silver
  • Gold
  • Platinum
  • Opal
  • Jade
  • Pearl
  • Ruby
  • Sapphire
  • Emerald
  • Diamond (Level 15)

The above ranks will not apply to:

  • Employees, who will have their own ranking ladder (exact naming TBD).
  • Admins and Moderators, who will have a rank based on their specific role.

Badges

Your existing badges in Jive will not transfer over to Lithium.

We have defined some new badges, based on the number of times you:

  • Start a thread
  • Participate in a thread
  • Give or receive "kudos" (similar to likes/helpful in Jive)
  • Image and Video uploads

Based on your previous activities in Jive, you will be granted new badges.

We may define other badges in the future.

Read more
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PhoneBoy
Admin
Admin

Welcome to "This Week in CheckMates," your weekly highlight reel for all things CheckMates!

Past and future posts will be available here: About CheckMates

To have these updates show up in your preferred RSS reader add the following URL: About CheckMates RSS Feed 

See also our social media accounts and our podcast (RSS Feed😞

CheckMates at CPX 360 Bangkok

Valeri Loukine‌, Moti Sagey‌, Amit Sharon‌, Lillie Miller‌, and I were at CPX 360 Bangkok!

We gave away some cool shirts, one of which is modeled by Ashwin Ram‌:

For the younger ones: 

Yes, we will have these in Vegas and Vienna!

We will also have a scavenger hunt at these locations as well.

Here is a picture with the winners in Bangkok:

Community Highlights

Here are the conversations worth watching in the community:

CheckMates Community Guidelines 

It's been a while since we needed to highlight the community guidelines. We recently updated them to clarify a few things that came up in recent threads.

When Will SmartConsole Support In-Place Updates? 

Coming soon.

https://community.checkpoint.com/community/infinity-general/appliances-and-gaia/blog/2019/01/21/new-... 

We've released these features and demonstrate them at CPX. Valeri Loukine‌ is even doing a presentation about it!

LightBoard Series - Maestro - Security of hyperscale (technical deep dive) 

One of the things we announced at CPX 360!

Can R80.10 manage R80.20 gateways 

Yes, with the most recent Jumbo Hotfix.

Domain Objects (FQDN) - An Unofficial ATRG 

The updates to Domain Objects in R80.20 are a good reason to upgrade if you're on R80.10 or earlier!

UserCenter OpenSearch engines for browsers 

Very useful thing to have integrated in your browser.

R80.20 update cheat sheet - fw monitor 

fw monitor is useful for troubleshooting packet flows in the security gateway. It saw some changes in R80.20.

R77.20.85 performance issue on centrally managed SMB 

A fix for this issue is undergoing QA now. 

DNS Flag Day and Check Point 

There may be an issue with IPS if you're on R77.30 and not on the latest jumbo hotfix. 

Deleting old/unused policies - R77 and below. Best practices? 

Database backups are your friend.

App Control ignoring a rule 

Troubleshooting issues with Identity Awareness.

Upcoming Events

We are currently in the planning phases for our 2019 events.

If you want one in your area, get in contact with us: [email protected] 

Read more
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