Check Point SmartCenter UTM

Check Point SmartCenter UTM Overview:

SmartCenter™ provides for central management of all Check Point products.

Your Challenge:

There used to be a time when having a firewall on your perimeter and antivirus software on your desktops was considered cutting-edge security. This is no longer true. With the advent of Internet worms and increasingly sophisticated attacks, the network security picture is more complicated than ever. This new environment, coupled with emerging security regulations and the need to extend access to remote users and business partners, requires a more thorough security implementation. Multiple layers of protection start at the perimeter with firewalls and move deeper into the network to protect sensitive departments, servers, applications, and even user PCs and notebooks. Unfortunately, this kind of multilayered security leads to management complexity. The challenge of keeping security current at multiple sites and on multiple platforms can quickly become an onerous task for the resource-constrained IT department.

Without effective management, the most complex security deployment is only as strong as its weakest link. Security management solutions must enable enterprises to track the effectiveness of their security deployments, provide detailed information for security forensic investigations, and enable consistent security policy enforcement and proactive updates across the organization.

0ur Solution:

SmartCenter™, based on the Check Point unified security architecture, enables enterprises to centrally define network, data, and endpoint security policies; correlate and prioritize security events; and perform advanced monitoring and reporting—all via a single console. Distribution of security policy and threat defense updates across all gateways becomes easy, ensuring consistent policy enforcement and up-to-date protection against the latest threats. As a result, enterprises are able to protect business-critical assets as well as maximize their security investments.

Features & Benefits:

Product Features

• Integrated network, data, and endpoint security management
• Visualization of security policy
• Automated policy and software distribution
• Access to policies through Web portal or management console
• High availability and scalability

Product Benefits

• Maximizes operational efficiency
• Enables consistent policy enforcement and control over the entire network
• Provides easier demonstration of regulatory compliance
• Maintains the most current, preemptive security

Comprehensive Security Management:

Check Point offers various levels of management functionality with SmartCenter UTM™ and SmartCenter Power™ to deliver integrated and cost-effective solutions to enable the highest levels of control and security in a single management console.

SmartCenter UTM delivers centralized management for all Check Point applications. It has the following components:

• SmartDashboard™ is the interface that enables administrators to centrally define security and VPN policies
• SmartView Tracker™ provides real-time visual tracking of all logged connections and administrator activity SmartCenter Power provides all the capabilities of SmartCenter and the following additional management capabilities for the most complex environments:
• SmartPortal™ extends browser-based access to SmartCenter
• SmartMap™ enables visual management of security policies
• SmartView Monitor allows real-time network, VPN, and user monitoring
• SmartUpdate™ centralizes the distribution and inventory of software and licenses
• SmartLSM™ enables large-scale management of remote security devices
• SmartDirectory provides integration with LDAP-based directories
• Management High Availability provides fault tolerance of all management operations

Policy-based VPN/firewall management
SmartDashboard, a part of SmartCenter, is sophisticated yet easy-to-use. Administrators can manage all elements of a security system: network and desktop policies, VPNs, network address translation (NAT), Quality of Service (QoS), messaging security such as anti-spam policies, content inspection like antivirus protections, Web and remote access, and SmartDefense updates. “Objects” for networks, hosts, users, services, resources, and actions defined as part of a security policy are visually represented and can be manipulated from within SmartDashboard. For example, objects can be organized into SmartGroups and network objects can easily be cloned to simplify policy definition. Because the components of the unified security architecture are tightly integrated, the same objects can be shared across enforcement points and applications, saving administrative time and ensuring consistency in policy configuration across the network.

In addition to a centralized dashboard, SmartCenter solutions come with a wide range of policy management tools to streamline policy creation. Predefined global policies allow appropriate connections between the enforcement points with a variety of services. SmartCenter can manage multiple versions of policies, allowing the administrator to revert to an older version of the policy.

Integrated security
SmartCenter provides central management for all Check Point products. From SmartDashboard, an administrator can define and enforce policy, track logs, monitor security and network activity, view reports on network and security activity trends, and centrally distribute security and software updates. With all these capabilities at their fingertips, administrators gain operational efficiency as well as increased visibility into the security posture of their entire network.

Integrated endpoint security
Check Point Endpoint Security is the first single agent for total endpoint security that combines the highest-rated firewall, network access control (NAC), program control, antivirus, anti-spyware, data security, and remote access. It protects PCs and eliminates the need to deploy and manage multiple agents, reducing total cost of ownership.

Integrated with SmartCenter, Check Point Endpoint Security can be centrally managed with other Check Point solutions, making enterprise-wide security administration more efficient.

Global security defense updates
Integrated SmartDefense Services within SmartDashboard enable administrators to centrally update security configurations and defenses from a single, unified interface, thereby maintaining the most current preemptive security for the Check Point security infrastructure. SmartDefense allows different defense profiles to be associated with different gateways. All gateways and their SmartDefense profiles can be assigned and centrally managed through the SmartDashboard.

Centralize policy management and visualization via the SmartDashboard.

Centralized security configuration and defense updates are done via the SmartDashboard.

Simple VPN deployment
SmartDashboard enables administrators to define VPN communities and set security parameters for the entire VPN topology, including intranet, extranet, and remote access deployments, in a single operation. The security administrator simply groups all VPN-1 gateways in a community, and VPNs are automatically enabled among all the gateways or between remote users and gateways. As new sites or users are added to the community, they automatically inherit the appropriate properties and can immediately establish secure sessions with the rest of the VPN community. Security administrators are relieved of the repetitive task of designing and defining encryption rules. SmartCenter supports a number of network topologies, including fully meshed, star, hub and spoke, and hybrid topologies. VPN objects and communities can be easily incorporated into the security rulebase.

Real-time troubleshooting
SmartView Tracker provides real-time visual tracking of all logged connections and administrator activity. Administrators can filter or search for events of interest, and in the case of an attack or detection of suspicious activity, may immediately disable or terminate connections from specific IP addresses. These features dramatically reduce the time required to troubleshoot configuration errors.

SmartCenter Power - Advanced Security Management for Complex Environments:

SmartCenter provides an enterprise with the capability to centrally define and monitor its security policy. SmartCenter Power and management add-on modules, such as Eventia Reporter and Eventia Analyzer, deliver even greater understanding and control of the security environment with a number of advanced, integrated capabilities.

Web-based access to SmartCenter
With SmartPortal, the security team can extend browser-based SmartCenter access to outside groups such as technical support staff or auditors, yet maintain centralized control of policy enforcement. SmartPortal users can view security policies and status of Check Point products, as well as administrator audit trails. Advanced users can be given administrator management permissions. This extended functionality facilitates team coordination in mitigating attacks or troubleshooting network and security issues. SmartPortal allows security administrators to extend, at their discretion, security policy access to the other groups, thereby increasing security visibility within the organization.

Security visualization
Most organizations have a complex topology of gateways, hosts, servers, and networks distributed over many different machines and enforced in many different rules and rulebases. SmartMap provides a visual representation of the security policy, making it easier to understand and troubleshoot policies. It also enables security managers to validate the integrity of their security policy before deployment.

Real-time monitoring
SmartView Monitor provides real-time monitoring of security, network, VPN tunnel, and user activity. This solution presents administrators with graphical views of metrics such as bandwidth, roundtrip time, packet loss, and VPN tunnel status. Armed with information provided by SmartView Monitor, administrators can maximize performance of their networks and manage costs.

Automated software and license distribution
SmartUpdate automatically distributes software applications and updates to Check Point and OPSEC-certified products and manages product licenses. It provides a centralized means to guarantee that security throughout the network is always upto- date. Furthermore, it reduces the need for IT personnel at branch offices.

Large-scale VPN and security management
SmartLSM introduces a new management paradigm for large-scale VPN/security installations. Using SmartLSM, administrators can provision a single security policy—called a Profile—and apply it to hundreds of gateways. In addition, automated processes for policy installation and updates enable rapid deployment and minimize management requirements. This reduces the costs and time required to deploy and manage security for hundreds of gateways.

Dynamic updates for new features and product support
The unique SmartCenter plugin architecture enables customers to add new features and support for new products on a dynamic basis. These management plugin packages can be easily uploaded and consist only of those components necessary for managing new gateway products or specific features, thus, avoiding a full upgrade to the next release.

Management infrastructure redundancy
Management High Availability delivers nonstop connectivity to Check Point enforcement points. Multiple management servers can be connected to others by a “nervous system” that automatically synchronizes customer and administrator data. This eliminates the need to deploy dedicated, redundant hardware and software.

Documentation:

Download the Check Point SmartCenter UTM Datasheet (PDF).