Check Point signs partners for new security architecture

Check Point Software Tuesday announced new technology and partnerships designed to help businesses boost the performance of their VPNs and firewalls in order to keep pace with the growing volume of data flowing over networks.

Check Point said it is developing a new way of designing security systems that allows the most demanding computing jobs, such as the encryption and compression of data, to be off-loaded onto compatible hardware and software. Hardware and software compatible with the Check Point architecture will be offered by industry partners.

As part of the effort, Check Point said it will make application programming interfaces for some of its products available to partners that make servers, network processors and other equipment. Partners that have signed on to the effort so far are Compaq; chipmakers Intel and Broadcom; as well as Nokia, Intrusion.com and RapidStream, each of which make a line of security appliance servers, Check Point said.

Nokia will be the first company to integrate the new security architecture, in its IP 530 security appliance, Check Point said.

The architecture will be represented in what Check Point officials are calling Next Generation, the next major revision to its security products.

To allow those more demanding security jobs to be performed separately, Next Generation is being designed as a series of modules that independently perform discrete functions such as firewall, encryption, compression and public-key operations. Those tasks will be farmed out and run on specialized chips from third-party vendors or software running on standard servers, which will give a performance boost using technologies like parallel processing, Check Point said.

Officials are due to elaborate on the announcement at a press conference Tuesday morning in San Francisco.

Check Point officials said the new performance architecture could help boost VPN and firewall performance tenfold, enabling gigabit and multigigabit Internet security systems.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.