We will update this post with pictures and the like from CPX360 Asia in Bangkok!

Past events:

• https://community.checkpoint.com/community/about-checkmates/blog/2018/02/02/checkmates-at-cpx360-bar...‌
• https://community.checkpoint.com/community/about-checkmates/blog/2018/02/05/checkmates-at-cpx360-las...‌

CheckMates will have a booth on the Expo floor and will run several breakout sessions as follows:

Wednesday 28th February 2018:

• 13:30 - 14:00: Best of CheckMates: My Top Check Point CLI Commands - Moti Sagey, Dameon Welch Abernathy
• 14:00 - 14:30: vSEC on AWS cloud use case and best practices - Aaron Mckeown - Head of Security Engineering & Architecture Xero
• 15:00 - 15:30: Adaptive Security Framework for Internet of Drones - Rohan Patil - Head of Operations, VISTA InfoSec
• 15:30 - 16:00: Artificial Intelligence in Managed Incident Response - Ramandeep Singh- CEO, QOS Technology

Thursday 1 March 2018:

• 13:30 - 14:00: Industrial Control Systems Use Cases - Mati Epstein - Check Point 
• 14:00 - 14:30: Check Point R80.X Workflow, API and Automation Use Cases - Ekta Siwani - Senior Software Engineer QOS Technology
• 15:00 - 15:30: Wait, Wait, Don’t Click That! Minimizing the User Factor as a Security Risk - Joshua Behar, CEO, Ericom
• 15:30 - 16:00: L’Oréal vSEC Case Study - Jay Togarrati Infrastructure Manager, L’Oréal 

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 

If you can't wait for the weekly update, we also post relevant threads to our social media accounts:

• Twitter: @CPCheckMates
• Facebook: Check Point CheckMates
• LinkedIn: Check Point CheckMates

Community Highlights

Last week, the CheckMates team was in Las Vegas.

This week was mostly spent recovering.

However, the community is continuing to grow and expand!

How to get all the information about a deleted rule 

Another example of the power of the R80.10 API.

Inline layer question 

A good discussion of how packets are processed with inline layers in R80.10.

Inspection of Inter-Subnet traffic in AWS VPC using CloudGuard 

Some great stuff here on protecting resources within your VPC on different subnets with CloudGuard (vSEC) gateways!

Combining all interfaces in one bond, how bad is this practice? 

Vigorous debate in this thread. There's reasons to do it (and not).

Protecting AWS S3 Buckets with SandBlast 

Demoed at CPX360 Las Vegas, you can now protect your S3 buckets with SandBlast!

Docker Container Service Objects 

Integrate Docker Containers with the Check Point Security Policy via the API!

IP List Enforcement using Identity API  

Another way to block IPs without doing a policy installation, this time using the Identity Awareness API!

R80.10 IPS Best Practices Guide 

Finally published and will help you get the most out of IPS in R80.10!

https://community.checkpoint.com/docs/DOC-2625 

Even if you're not using Azure, these scripts may help with the creation of cluster objects via scripting (as it's not something that can be done via the R80.x API yet).

Blink, anyone ? 

Have you used Blink to install a gateway in 5-7 minutes with jumbo hotfixes? Share your experiences! If you haven't, try today!

Great Series of Articles on SMB Devices

Guenther W. Albrecht‌ has produced a series of informative documents related to SMB devices that are worth having a look at:

• ClusterXL and SMB devices 
• USB First Time Config using autoconf.clish files - How it is written 
• USB First Time Config using autoconf.clish files - How it works 
• SMB GWs Advanced Settings 
• USB First Time Config using autoconf.clish files - How to use them 
• Configuration transfer between different SMB models 
• Perform scheduled scripted tasks on SMB devices 
• SecureXL & CoreXL on SMB devices 

Upcoming Events

If you're coming to CPX360in Bangkok, CheckMates will be there! 

Meanwhile, our upcoming TechTalks include:

• Mobile Security Best Practices on February 21st
• Security Visibility Best Practices with SmartEvent on March  7th

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 [email protected]. Please include the User Center account # you wish to apply the benefit to. Requests can be submitted until April 1st

CheckMates was out in full force at CPX360 Las Vegas!

Many folks visited our booth:

And, of course, I was there:

Moti Sagey‌ was also there presenting to our employees and partners:

CheckMates proper even made it to a general session, as did this guy FlatMoti:

That was a backstage shot, but FlatMoti even got on the general stage, thanks to Neatsun Ziv‌

We also had breakout tracks that we streamed live (schedule below)

Wednesday, 7 February 2018 in the Delfino Ballroom

• 13:30 - 14:30
  • Best of CheckMates: My Top Check Point CLI Commands - Tim Hall
  • An Infinity Case Study: The Mississippi Secretary of State Experience - Russell Walker - Chief Technology Officer Mississippi Secretary of State 
  • Securing the Education Sector - Terry Hect - AT&T
• 15:00 - 14:00
  • Deploying Check Point SandBlast Agent from Proof of Concept to Production - Joe Sullivan - Information Security Professional RCB Bank
  • Enterprise Security in the Cloud – The Benefits of Infrastructure as Code - DJ Schleen, Michael Trofi - 1US Holocaust Memorial Museum 

Thursday, 8 February 2018 in the Delfino Ballroom

• 13:30 - 14:30
  • Cyber Race: Hacking The Giants - Oded Vanunu, Head of Products Vulnerability Research Check Point 
  • Security Infrastructure as Code - Kellman Meghu - Global Security Manager, Sycomp
• 15:00-16:00
  • Artificial Intelligence in Managed Incident Response - Ramandeep Singh- CEO, QOS Technology 
  • Building your very own Check Point “playground" - Eric Anderson - Chief Technology Officer Netanium 
  • More Security is Less Security Or How HTTPS Blinds Security Architectures - Eric Crutchlow Security Engineer Check Point

Here's my makeshift streaming rig:

And let's not forget the biggest announcement: https://community.checkpoint.com/community/about-checkmates/blog/2018/02/11/announcing-checkmates-pr...‌

While not CheckMates related, strictly speaking, I couldn't resist sharing that Check Point ads will be showing up in airports near you soon!

It was fun, Las Vegas!

Next up for the CheckMates team: Bangkok!

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 

If you can't wait for the weekly update, we also post relevant threads to our social media accounts:

• Twitter: @CPCheckMates
• Facebook: Check Point CheckMates
• LinkedIn: Check Point CheckMates

Community Highlights

While I personally took it easy after spending last week in Barcelona for CPX360 and prepping for CPX360 in Las Vegas next week, there was plenty going on here on CheckMates!

iPhone Real-time Push notification on Events 

This is something I wish were built into the product natively, but Keld Norman‌ figured how to add it. Coolest "hack" I've seen in quite some time!

Show Policy in Smartview Web  

You can't view the policy in SmartView, but you can get a web-based view of your policy...

R80.10 - Hide behind many question 

An older thread that's worth highlighting as it comes up from time to time. Otherwise known as "many to fewer" NAT.

Problem accessing standby cluster member from non-local network 

Some detailed troubleshooting of this problem...and a solution!

Domain object failure in R80.10 (sk120558) 

If you have this issue and can't apply the relevant hotfix, there's a workaround in this thread.

How to disable SIP ALG inspection in a specific rule in Checkpoint? Also Could this be done globally... 

Couple of different solutions offered here.

FW object rule report 

You can do this using Show Package Tool and the API.

https://community.checkpoint.com/thread/6315-creating-firewall-rules-per-cli 

Yes, this is possible since R80. Here's a few practical examples of how to do it.

Upcoming Events

If you're coming to CPX360in Las Vegas and Bangkok, CheckMates will be there! 

Meanwhile, our upcoming TechTalks include:

• Mobile Security Best Practices on February 14th
• Security Visibility Best Practices with SmartEvent on March  7th

The CheckMates team was at CPX360 in Barcelona!

In fact, we even had a booth:

I even wore a tie for the occasion!

We also had some breakout sessions:

Tim Hall‌ had an awesome session that he will repeat in Las Vegas!

Tim really brought a crowd in!

(And yes, I was upfront sharing the photos to social media, as I usually do)

It was really great to meet various members of the community live and in person!

And because we were in Barcelona, we can't forget the tapas:

If you didn't make it to Barcelona, hope to see you in Las Vegas and/or Bangkok!

A brief introductory video about Check Point's official User Community: CheckMates!

First premiered at CPX360 Barcelona

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 

If you can't wait for the weekly update, we also post relevant threads to our social media accounts:

• Twitter: @CPCheckMates
• Facebook: Check Point CheckMates
• LinkedIn: Check Point CheckMates

Community Highlights

We had some great talks in our CheckMates tracks at CPX360 in Barcelona this past week, recordings of which we will make available at a later time.

I also met many CheckMates members in person, including Pascal Aebi‌ who did something cool with the backpack that everyone at CPX360 got:

Meanwhile, here are a few cool threads that happened this past week on the Community:

Anonymizer matches all traffic 

A great use of inline layers in R80.10 to restrict the ports specific applications might allow.

Exporting data from SmartConsole: How do I select columns? 

Another great tip from Tomer Sole‌

In which cases would you use VSX? 

If you're considering using VSX, this is a good thread to help you decide if it's the right approach or not.

ClusterXL on Take_70 does not function properly 

If you're on the bleeding edge, take note of this issue. 

CMA IPs not responding to ARP broadcasts 

If you have Cisco VXLAN in your network and have MDS, you might have an issue with ARP. Turns out to be a Cisco bug of sorts.

Upcoming Events

If you're coming to CPX360in Las Vegas and Bangkok, CheckMates will be there!

Meanwhile, our upcoming TechTalks include:

• Mobile Security Best Practices on February 14th
• Security Visibility Best Practices with SmartEvent on March  7th

Check Point is proud to name its CheckMates Member of the Month for January 2018: Gaurav Pandya‌

A network engineer turned security engineer, Gaurav both manages and helps others manage their Check Point firewalls. CheckMates has been a valuable tool for him to learn more and share what he's learned with others.

Gaurav, tell us a little about yourself & what you do

I have overall 9 years of IT experience. I started my career as a Network Engineer and then moved into the Security domain – Firewalls (Mainly Check Point) and Proxies. We provide Check Point firewall support for various customers and some of them are managed customers. I'm personally responsible for new implementations, upgrades, and troubleshooting of Check Point firewalls. I also perform configuration and troubleshooting of Cisco and Extreme switches.

Tell us a little about your experience with Check Point

I have started to use Check Point from the R65 release on SecurePlatform (SPLAT). I have worked with R70 & R77 versions in SPLAT as well as GAIA. I have done new Implementations and Upgrades for many customers, IPS signature review, and other updates according to customer requirements. I like the new version R80.x, especially the automation capabilities. It has great features with a unified console. I have migrated some customer’s database from R77.30 to R80.10.

Do you have a unique deployment of a Check Point product? 

I came across a new requirement of POC of NAT64, which I had not done before. I did it in my LAB and successfully completed a customer POC. I also got support from Dameon Welch Abernathy. See the thread here: IPv6 with Checkpoint R77.30 

What do you use the CheckMates platform for? 

Whenever I login to CheckMates, I am learning something new as people are asking questions, doing troubleshooting, and giving tips and tricks which is very helpful. I started to share my thoughts and ask questions which I have faced. It is really great platform!

What do you like to do for fun?

In my free time, I play Cricket with my friends and listen to light music, which is relaxing. Sometimes I also read technical books in spare time.

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 

If you can't wait for the weekly update, we also post relevant threads to our social media accounts:

• Twitter: @CPCheckMates
• Facebook: Check Point CheckMates
• LinkedIn: Check Point CheckMates

Community Highlights

Highlights from the past week includes:

list of different IP addresses to be blocked 

There are many different ways to block a couple hundred thousand IP addresses...without typing them in!

How to troubleshoot an app drop with the extended log options 

Great troubleshooting tip here from Tomer Sole‌

Multiple VPN - MEP 

How can I setup a primary and backup S2S VPN tunnels 

Different approaches you can take when you're trying to do multiple VPN paths...depending on whether or not the remote end is Check Point or not.

Script for basic configuration capture from bash CLI 

Another great script from Eric Beasley‌ that's useful to document your existing OS configuration.

How to test the Management API with the Cloud Demo 

Tomer Sole‌ is on fire with the tips this week, this showing you how to test our R80.x API without having to stand up your own manager to test it!

Report for unused objects on R77.30 SMS 

While there is an easy way to get this information in R80.10 (See Unused Objects Cleanup‌), it's a little more challenging in R77.30, but possible, as this thread describes.

https://community.checkpoint.com/thread/6615-policy-installation-stages 

Ever wonder what some of the messages you see during policy installation means?

Upcoming Events

If you're coming to CPX360, CheckMates will be there!

Meanwhile, our upcoming TechTalks include:

• Mobile Security Best Practices on February 14th
• Security Visibility Best Practices with SmartEvent on March  7th