Techzine Talks on Tour
Techzine Talks on Tour is a podcast series recorded on location at the events Coen and Sander attend all over the world. A spin-off of the successful Dutch series Techzine Talks, this new English series aims to reach new audiences.
Each episode is an approximately 30-minute discussion that Coen or Sander has with a high-level executive of a technology company. The episodes are single-take affairs, and we don't (or hardly) edit them afterwards, apart from polishing the audio up a bit of course. This way, you get an honest, open discussion where everyone speaks their mind on the topic at hand.
These topics vary greatly, as Coen and Sander attend a total of 50 to 60 events each year, ranging from open-source events like KubeCon to events hosted by Cisco, IBM, Salesforce and ServiceNow, to name only a few. With a lot of experience in many walks of IT life, Coen and Sander always manage to produce an engaging, in-depth discussion on general trends, but also on technology itself.
So follow Techzine Talks on Tour and stay in the know. We might just tell you a thing or two you didn't know yet, but which might be very important for your next project or for your organization in general. Stay tuned and follow Techzine Talks on Tour.
Techzine Talks on Tour
Three decades of Check Point (and cybersecurity): a conversation with Gil Shwed
Today we have a rather special guest on Techzine Talks on Tour. During Check Point's recent CPX conference in Vienna, we sat down for a 20-minute conversation with Gil Shwed, co-founder of Check Point and widely regarded as the inventor of the firewall. We asked him about the past 30+ years, the present and about the future for Check Point and the broader cybersecurity industry.
Gil Shwed, co-founder and now Executive Chairman of Check Point Software Technologies, talks about how he conceptualized network security technology in 1990, years before the World Wide Web existed. He recognized early that internet connectivity would transform global communication, but also that it would create security challenges.
"We actually started a new industry, the cybersecurity industry, not just network security," according to Shwed. He describes Check Point as "probably the number one company that was founded solely around the internet that has survived up to these days, 32 years later." This longevity is particularly remarkable in technology, where few companies maintain market leadership for decades.
Shwed now transitions to his role as Executive Chairman alongside new CEO Nadav Zafrir, We talk about how the new CEO is different from Shwed and not different at the same time and what the new CEO may have in store for the company. However, Shwed is still acutely aware that a vendor like Check Point doesn't control the pace of innovation. "It's the attackers that are setting the stage," he notes. Cybersecurity will always be challenging and relevant. That is true three decades after Shwed and Check Point helped create it, but is most likely still the case three decades from now.
Listen to this new episode of Techzine Talks on Tour now.
Welcome to this new episode of Techzine Talks on Tour. I'm at CPX 2025 in Vienna and I'm here with none other than former CEO, I should say, and co-founder of Checkpoint, gil Schwedt. Thank you for joining us. It's an honor. I mean, you are one of the most well-known people in cybersecurity. I would say so. It's nice to have you on the show so welcome.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much. It's an honor having you here in the conference. I hope you're enjoying it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's my third one, I think. Last year I was here too, and in 2019 I think I was here. So I also see a lot of transformation in CheckPoint. So just in general. So you just stepped down from the CEO role, right? So you moved to you're now the executive.
Speaker 2:Executive chairman.
Speaker 1:Yeah, on the board, looking back, just why did you start Check Point for the first place? I would be interested to hear about that, because there's supposed to be a nice story behind it.
Speaker 2:Oh, there's many.
Speaker 1:And also just I'd like to talk about what you've seen in the past 30 years and where you think we're going where we are at. Are we in a better place than we were, like 10 years ago, 20 years ago, Things like that. But first of all, how did you start Checkpoint?
Speaker 2:So I knew that I wanted to be an entrepreneur, develop my own product and so on since a very young age. I worked in computers since the age of 12 or even 14 and by the time I was like 17. I already knew that I want to build something of my own and I was looking for different ideas and I had the idea about a network security technology. That didn't come from the Internet, it came in like 1990, way before the Internet, and it was how we can make networks safer. Networks were just making their first steps into the world, compartmentalizing internal network actually, and I thought it's a good idea. But actually I decided that there's no exciting market for that idea. And then three years have passed exciting market for that idea. And when three years have passed and at the end of 92 or the beginning of 93, suddenly I saw the Internet opening up and the Internet by then was an academic network. That was pretty close. It was before the invention of the web. I mean just to put things in perspective.
Speaker 2:But especially as a young person from a small country, I said wow, that's going to be a revolution. That's going to revolutionize the world, the fact that I can send a message to any, nowhere in the world. The fact that I can get news whenever they appear from anywhere in the world, fact that I can distribute my software I send it to people that I work with, it doesn't take two weeks on the sending a diskette, it's now a few minutes and it doesn't cost much it seems to me like something that can change the world. And then I had this idea of security technology. So I said, wow, that's the right use for that technology. It's actually a very simple use, much simpler than compartmentalizing a network. And pretty much everybody that connected to the internet asked the same question we want to connect. How do we secure that? How do we make sure that?
Speaker 1:all Because, especially at first, probably it was the companies that wanted to be very secure that wanted to connect to the Internet as well, right, there was companies.
Speaker 2:They wanted to connect and send email and access their other researchers and so on. They didn't want all these students in like 15,000 universities to get into their network. That was the first change and then I started CheckPoint with two friends. I started with two partners, Marius and Shlomo, and we had the right time, because the first two years, by the way, the main thing that we had to do is convince people about the potential of the internet not about the need for security, but about the internet.
Speaker 1:And it had quite a big domino effect. Right, Because Shlomo is bent on to found and be CEO of many others. I think he's CEO of K2 Networks at the moment. Right, the impact of Checkpoint is much bigger than just Checkpoint itself, right At the end of the day. No, I think.
Speaker 2:I don't want to take the credit, but we actually started the new industry, the cyber security industry, not just the network security. Out of that, there are many sub-segments about securing cyber, and we were probably the number one company that was founded solely around the Internet and survived up to these days, 32 years later.
Speaker 1:So what about looking back over the past 30 years? Would you say you did everything right? Or were there moments where you thought maybe we should have done something different? Or maybe you underestimated something? Or maybe you overestimated something. Did you shed some?
Speaker 2:light on that. It's a good question. I think overall we did a lot of things right.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's not that you wouldn't be here otherwise they would be here and again.
Speaker 2:In technology, very few companies survive so many years. Very few markets, by the way, are hot after 32 years. So we are very lucky because we're in the right market too, and very few companies have the best technology after 30 some years. So I think we did a lot of things right. Could we have done better? We always strive to do better. So when I go to sleep every day, I'm not asking myself how great I am and how good I am. It's the opposite. I'm asking myself every day where should we do better, where, in which category, in which technology, in which country, and so on. And absolutely we could have done better, but I think overall, I'm very happy with what Check Point has done and does your new role give you a sort of a new perspective on things.
Speaker 1:So you, you have, you, you have less day-to-day responsibilities as a CEO. Now, right, so you can do you think about the market differently now, then, or then when you were the CEO so that's the idea.
Speaker 2:I'm just new into position and I need to take some time, you know, to relax and the CEO I basically do that.
Speaker 1:can you relax? Are you don't like the type of person that can relax?
Speaker 2:First, I'm learning. It's hard to learn, but I did unwind. I mean I definitely come. I mean one of the people were saying, okay, so how would you give all of it up? And I had one day in December, when I transitioned to this new role, that I said, okay, I need to organize my time again. And I went to my calendar and from like 50 meetings a week, we deleted all of them.
Speaker 1:Oh, that must be a very nice feeling.
Speaker 2:I say, whoa, what am I doing next week? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So now I still come to the office every day. I do one or two meetings a day, not 10 or 12 like I used to do before. It meetings a day, not 10 or 12 like I used to do before. It definitely frees up my mind to think about the next things, but I still need to take a few more months until I figure out what's my role and where. Again, of course, I have responsibilities the chairman of the board and I coach the new CEO.
Speaker 1:From the outside maybe I'm completely wrong, but from the outside, nadav seems to be a different person than you are, a different persona. Is that a correct observation? Or is he the opposite of you? How did that search go and how did the transition go between you two?
Speaker 2:First, nadav is very different. You're absolutely right about the personality. We are actually thinking alike of many issues, so we get along very, very well. We're very much in the honeymoon phase.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you still like each other, we like each other.
Speaker 2:We enjoy working with each other and there's no conflicts. We actually think in the same direction. He has very good instincts and I was looking for somebody different. I wasn't trying to replicate myself, I wasn't trying to get to somebody that I said is like me, but and I think it's both for me but also for checkpoint checkpoint needs somebody that's think, for example, we built a very strong company, very good operations, amazing R&D and so on and, for example, where I need, when we need, strength, is somebody that goes every day and and creates relationship with customer. It thinks about the customer perspective. Of course, as a CEO, we need to manage the operation and the R&D and so on. We need somebody that maybe needs to challenge more the organization for even more innovation. I think we've done tremendous amount of innovation, but we should definitely do more, and I think Nadav has this personality and he's a very exceptional human being.
Speaker 1:Do you think the way of working will change Because exceptional human being? Do you think the way of working will change Because Checkpoint isn't very well known for a very fast time to market for a new product? You weren't the first with Sassy, but you do it in a different way. You always did it in a different way. So you make sure that everything is as good as it can be and then go for the market. At least that's my perception from looking at it from a relative outsider position. Do you think that will change? Will you move faster than you used to?
Speaker 2:I hope it will move faster. We definitely want to re-enter and, by the way, after 30 years you're tired and somebody new comes and all the same things that you say well, I'm not sure if we can do it. Ask them from scratch. And again, like a CEO, you're trying to make 10 things happen. Not all of them happen, but if one happens it's maybe not good enough, If three happens, it's pretty good and if five happens it's amazing, because the pace of change is quite high.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm also a CEO. I'm one of the owners of my company. We only have 10 people, so it's easier to manage. But I understand that you want to do a lot of things, but not everything is successful right. So, going back to the question do you think you want to move faster, but do you also think that will happen with the new leadership or with the new way you have? Also think that will happen with the new leadership or with a new way you have? Because you also did some mess of some internal reorganization for, I don't know, in a past year. Do you already see the fruits of that that?
Speaker 2:you're moving quicker, I think. First, we are seeing a lot because we are in creating a lot of technology and we've done much more new business and new products last year, so we are seeing a lot of that. But I think I expect Nadav and I think Nadav expects from himself to move much faster and to do more in all the areas of the company, from innovation and AI all the way to the go-to-market, which I think when I meet with customers and partners and I do it a lot in this conference the uniform feedback that I get, the one thing that's common to everyone is saying you've got the best technology. We want to see you more. You should be more present in the markets.
Speaker 1:That's the number one opportunity for us, I think you also have discussions with different people at the company. Is that also you want to enter the company at different levels, maybe as well?
Speaker 2:absolutely we are. We have today a very broad platform and we need to. On one hand, every technology product is being sold to technical people based on its merits and on its technology. But people that are C-level the CIO, the chief information security officer they all should be far more involved in setting the strategy and understanding what we do. And again, the uniform feedback that I get with my CISO meetings, the Chief Information Security Officer they all say Checkpoint has a good reputation. Thank you, checkpoint, because I started my career just at lunch and several people said that I started my career 25 years ago being the Checkpoint 501 admin. I'm now the CISO. I want to hear more from you. I'm not hearing enough from you.
Speaker 1:I do think you have that name in the market. I actually just had a chat with an evangelist a Check Point evangelist, locally from the Benelux, and he said there was actually a customer who really wanted Check Point, even though he wanted a very advanced router with extra security capabilities, and I actually told him. So he said to me I actually told him you're much better off buying something from Cisco because they're much further along in the route, but no, I want Checkpoint. So that's testament to how well you've done in the market. Right, but at the end of the day, you need to have different conversations as well. But at the end of the day, you need to have different conversations as well. And that's, I think, for he also told me that nowadays it's still mostly about quantum. Most of his conversation with customers are about quantum, not necessarily all the other stuff, and that requires different conversations.
Speaker 2:It's going to be interesting to see how that goes, and I think Nadav is very capable of doing that. Over the past decade he built an amazing network of CISOs that work with him and he built almost 20 companies, so I think he definitely understands the different sub-segments of security and how to talk about that and how to understand the customers. And he definitely understands the difference between launching a startup and getting to the first few customers and the first few million dollars into scaling it and we are now today at two and a half billion dollars and how to get it to tens of thousands of customers and not just to the first 20 or 30.
Speaker 1:That's always hard right. So I think it's always like first the first target is one billion, and then it's two, and then you want to go to ten. Basically five to ten.
Speaker 2:And then the first target is one, and then it's ten million dollars, and then most companies break in that process, going from one to 10 to 100. Very few companies make it over 100.
Speaker 1:And especially in the cybersecurity industry. I mean, I think last time I checked there were 3,500 security companies. So it is very hard to scale as a company in cybersecurity right Because there are so many point solutions.
Speaker 2:So I think we've already proven that we can scale, and what we need to make sure is this scalability goes into more customers and maybe new areas, and I think the world is changing, so we definitely need to go to it. Now, what's a new area? Is it more network? Is it more something else? That's a good question. The opportunity is almost unlimited. But that's a good question and the opportunity is almost unlimited but that's also the the pitfall right.
Speaker 1:There are so many opportunities that you you need to choose at the end of the day where you want to go. Sure, and and from what I understand from the variety, I speak to lots of customers and MSPs as well it's it's also that the platform, the term platform, is very overused at the moment and and there's also there are limits to platforms as well, right, so, especially for companies, what do you consider to be the limits for the platform that you're building?
Speaker 2:I think we need to prove first that we can build. I think we built the right platform. We need to prove that it creates the benefits and it's critical. Organization cannot manage 50 security products. Organization cannot connect them, cannot manage them, cannot do all this stuff and, mainly, doesn't deliver good security, because the good security is when all the technologies actually work together in conjunction with one another. So rebuild the platform that I think is very well architected and does a lot of things inside. We're now opening it up to a few more solutions to connect to external. I mean, we already have many connectors to the outside, but we need to do more of that and the future cybersecurity solution for a company will have fewer vendors, more consolidation, but mainly an architecture or a platform that really connects things together.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I completely agree. I hear that a lot. It's just that cybersecurity companies are very competitive with each other as well, right? So, especially the third party collaboration, that mainly rests a lot on the willingness of the other companies and checkpoints to actually do this right and to actually give the best experience to the customers. Because you can say look, I can share some of my telemetry with your platform. Or you can say, I will share all of my telemetry with your platform, but then the other platform will lose its competitive advantage because it's going to give away the crown jewels. So there is friction in that discussion, right?
Speaker 2:Some friction, some not, because there are a lot of companies that we work, Most of the companies in our space we are not competing with. We are competing on mindshare, we are competing, maybe on budget, we are not competing on technology and product, and I think there is a lot more room to collaboration and again, at the end of the day, I think what will win is what's good for the customers and what will create and what will provide the best security. That's our commitment. So again, I could have said we become the supermarket and we sell you more and more solutions. That's not a platform. It's an approach that some vendors are taking, just selling you more products. A platform is when the things work together and to get the best security you must have all the elements actually working together.
Speaker 1:Do you think, in general, that we're in a? I mean, I would guess you would say yes, but do you think that we're in a better place now than 30 years ago? Because you always seem to the cybersecurity industry always seems to be fighting an uphill battle against the attackers. That's not really. From my perspective. That's not really changing all that much, even though you're making it much safer, but they will always invent new ways to do this. Is there an end state of what you want to work towards?
Speaker 2:Unfortunately, the cyber is the one industry that doesn't have an end, kind of, and it's constantly changing. And it's constantly changing by definition, because no matter what we do, if we are doing an amazing job, the hackers will try to find new vectors to get in. And it's the only industry or one of, I don't know if the only but one of the few industries that you, as a customer, you don't set the pace and you don't set the goals. It's the other people, it's the other people, it's the attackers that are setting the stage. So, I mean, you know, in every system you can say I'm happy with my old phone, I want to keep it for another year, another five years, and it should work. In cyber that's not the case. Somebody else decides if the old device have vulnerabilities or if there's a new way to attack you. You need to defend against that. It's not for you to decide, and that's a constant challenge. That, by the way, what makes our life interesting, that's what's interesting about an industry that, after 30 years, is still hot.
Speaker 1:It's unusual. Obviously, you can say something about, for example, ai and the adoption of AI in companies actually setting the pace for you as well, right, sure, so that's something that you need to adapt to as well, and I think We've heard a lot about how cybersecurity companies use AI in their solutions and how attackers use AI, but now it's a lot about securing the AI that companies use. So all the SaaS platforms and all that stuff. I think we saw some interesting innovations from Check Point this week, but is that the next big challenge in cybersecurity? In in cyber security?
Speaker 2:ai is definitely a huge challenge and a huge opportunity. I think the hackers are already using ai. They will be using more and we can use it even in a bigger way because, again, a lot of the processes that we are struggling with how to do that administrator did the manually, but they have very limited capacity. Ai can do so much better. So I think it's a huge opportunity for our industry. Administrator did manually, but they have very limited capacity. Ai can do so much better. So I think it's a huge opportunity for our industry.
Speaker 1:And I think what Natalie, during her keynote, said very well, I think, is the simplicity that you need to work towards, and it also means a lot for convincing customers or other personas inside customers to actually look into cybersecurity more if it's simpler and if it's easier to understand. Right, and I think that's also going to be quite a hard challenge because the complexity only increases and, on the other hand, you want to make it simpler. Those two don't really mix very well, absolutely.
Speaker 2:But, by the way, that's always been our job. Security is the most technical field. Very few people understand everything in security. I would say almost no one understands everything. Our job is not just to find the way to prevent the next generation of attacks. Our way is how do we make it scalable, high performance, very simple, as much as possible transparent to the end user? You, as a user, you don't want to deal with security. You want to go to the internet, go to a server and work and you want minimum disruptions, if not zero, from the security stack. And that's a vendor. That's our job. Now sometimes we do it extremely well.
Speaker 2:The firewall itself, for example, is transparent. You install our technology. The stateful inspection that we invented is the one technology that's transparent. You install our technology. The stateful inspection that we invented is the one technology that's transparent. You install it on the network. The users don't know that it's there. It works really fast and it's simple to the administrator. But the user, it's transparent. Now there are many other technologies that we have that are a little bit less transparent that the user notices. Maybe things get complicated over the years, but our job is always that job to make it simple to the administrator and it's transparent to the end user.
Speaker 1:Well, at least it keeps life interesting, for sure for you and for me as well, because I can get to report on it. So that's very nice. I think we're almost out of time. I'm looking at your chief of staff, right? Yeah, am Am I right? Yes, okay, so it was no, I will I just. I have another meeting in three minutes as well with your CTO. So, I'm going to talk to her as well, so thank you very much for joining and looking forward to catch up again in the future.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much.