Introduction to SecureKnowledge Weekly

[_Val_]

Hello CheckMaters,

We are starting a set of weekly post about SecureKnowledge.

Our goal is to help you in understanding the knowledge base and logic behind it. We want to show you tips and tricks, explain how to find your answers in a more efficient manner. We will explain the different access levels you might have with Secure Knowledge and show you the way of gaining the most from that tool.

So, let's start with the basics.

What is SecureKnowledge?

Check Point’s SecureKnowledge™ (Knowledge Base) is a repository of knowledge articles including solutions and answers to technical issues and questions related to Check Point products.

It allows Check Point to share lessons learned and to help Check Point customers, partners and technology professionals to learn, understand and effectively deal with our products and solutions.

Check Point’s SecureKnowledge is maintained by our Technical Services organization, and, as part of the materials, contains answers to many of the common problems and questions submitted to Check Point TAC.

Secure Knowledge includes:

• Search Engine interface
• Release Kit articles
• “How To” articles
• “ATRG” Articles

Search Engine

Search Engine the the main interface of SecureKnowledge. It is used to look up a specific issue with error messages and key words. We encourage you to always start with Find prompt when you work with Secure Knowledge.

Release Kit SKs

These SK articles contain everything you need to know about a specific Check Point release: links to documentation packages and release notes,references to the binaries and installation files, including platform specific packages.

How To

It is a sub-set of SK articles with common practices addressing advanced configurations scenarios. It is extremely easy to find How To article of your choosing. Just go to the How To Aggregation SK and drill down from there. All How To cases are classified by product and platform.

In our weekly posts we will be presenting you with more details about specific How To SKs to help you in your daily work.

ATRG

ATRG - Advanced Technical Reference Guides are my personal favorite subset of SecureKnowledge. In upcoming posts I will introduce to my personal collection of selected technical guides that helps me to deal with complex tasks over the years.

Fell free to ask questions and suggest specific things that you would like to learn about SecureKnowledge. Stay tuned.

[Yuri_Slobodyany]

Always wondered but never verified regrading "Product Version" filtering of the search results - how exact are they ? I just always am hesitant to use it so not to miss some results that could be mistakenly categorized with the wrong version. . 

[Maarten_Sjouw]

I really like the collection of the Emmbedded SK's created by Gunther, would it be an idea to create a number of the same type for specific subjects, like VPN, NAT, IPS, APCL/URLF (just to name a few) type SK's?

I know that from the list of Embedded SK's I could just search through the list in the browser for a specific keyword which did not show when searching the normal knowledge base.

[Petr_Hantak]

First of all many thanks for Secure Knowledge‌ section. 

I don't know how much do you use "My Favorites" on Secure Knowledge database, but after some time it started to be useless for me. When you have many different favorites there, then you are not able to sort or group them. So I just keep my own little database with comments in One Note or bookmarks for example and "My Favorites" just works as highlight for me during normal search. I just see it was interested for me before, so usually I open it as first result during my SK search. Do you agree that at least some basic customization would be great there?

[Ivo_Marques]

My suggestion goes to “Cookbook for usual deployment of Check Point products”.

If I want to deploy a Remote Access scenario I should read the Remote Access Administration Guide maybe the Mobile Access Administration guide, the Security Management, etc.

I think it will be great to create the cookbook for common deployments and if you want to go further use the administration guides.

[_Val_]

Hi Yuri,

This is how it works. While looking up the solutions, you can chose three filters:

• Products, as in Software Blades: VPN, AVI, Anti-Bot, Management, etc. The list is away there.
• Type of the solution. It can be All, Howto, ATRG, and so on
• Version. your question is about this one

Each solution comes with these three fields predefined. If you open any of them, you will see relevant product and version on the top, before anything else, as following:

SK team is updating the articles all the time, so chances of missing a solution you need when filtering by Version are slim to nil. 

Please let me know if this helps,

Val

[_Val_]

Indeed, the Gunther's list is awesome. I have been looking into it, and it is a lot of work behind it. 

I have mentioned, however, that the list is not just the cases relates to Embedded Gaia specifically. It looks like a collection of useful cases the author listed while working on his own tasks. There are quite a few that are applicable on a wider range of deployment platforms.

I have similar lists, mostly related to things I have encountered, such as troubleshooting, performance optimization, best practices, ATRGs, VSX, etc.

In the thread just above this I have shown that you can actually filter SKs not only by keywords but also by version, product and type. Since this is something coming up often, I will dedicate a separate post on the topic of finding and filtering the solutions in Secure Knowledge. 

Concerning the lists, there are some already. For example, there is an SK for all HowTo articles with the links to each one. I personally miss a list of all ATRGs, and I will definitely talk to Secure Knowledge team about adding more.

[Yuri_Slobodyany]

Thx, I'll give it a try, will update

[Ronen_Zel]

ATRGs and Best Practices articles also have a dedicated page in Support Center:

https://supportcenter.checkpoint.com/supportcenter/portal?eventSubmit_doShowtechnicalreferenceguides 

[_Val_]

Anything does not sit right with you, ping me here

[_Val_]

Wow, thanks Ronen, I cannot explain how I missed this. Simple things 🙂

[_Val_]

Thanks a lot for your feedback, Petr. Yes, there is certainly a room to improve user experience with SecureKnowledge. I will make sure relevant people at Check Point receive your suggestion. Smart management of Favorites list is one, and I believe there will be others as well.

[_Val_]

Thanks Ivo, this is an interesting suggestion. We do encourage our customers to read User Guides on any occasion, with or without a specific tasks to do in mind.

One of the funnies challenges with Check Point products is that Management UI is very intuitive, and it is just too easy to skip admin guides when starting with the products.

Your suggestion, if came to life, would also decrease customers' willingness to refer to admin guides. We are actually trying to achieve an opposite goal here: more customers, engineers and technical experts to work with our official documentation.

[Martin_Raska]

Hi Valeri,

could you please share - Gunther's list?

[Martin_Raska]

Very good point Peter, I am using My favorites a lot and if I count them its 347 of saved sk. Any improvement for management those will be appreciated.

[_Val_]

But of course. Here we go: https://community.checkpoint.com/docs/DOC-2648-smb-devices-references-and-sk-s 

You can always use the CheckMates search tool, when looking for posts, it works quite well here 🙂

[PhoneBoy]

On the other hand, if the official documentation is lacking, then we should probably address that.

Even so, the community can also be a good resource as even cookbooks can't account for every scenario.

[_Val_]

We need to discuss this offline. 

[Sergei_Shir]

Please note that to improve the current documentation, readers should use these options:

1)

On the "Important Information" page, in the "Feedback" section, click the link "Please help us by sending your comments."

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Installation and Upgrade Guide R80.20.M1