“This is similar to that joke,” Gil Shwed says, “you do not have to outpace the lion; you only need to outrun your friend.” He is talking about the malevolent cyber threats faced by both the governments and private institutions- if it’s not hard to attack you, you will be attacked, it is that simple. “So, you must make your system and network complex to penetrate than your neighbors.”
Shwed is the CEO of Check Point and needs to know such. Check Point is the biggest and most powerful cybersecurity firms globally. Shwed has generated his fortune from business security software, and investigating potential threat actors and their strategies, as well as vulnerabilities in the software platforms that every citizen uses.
The 52-year-old’s net worth is currently at $3 billion, according to Forbes list. Shwed still owns 19 percent of the company he started 27 years ago. “The idea for network security came to me in the late 1980s,” he explains, “but at that time, the market didn’t exist for it. But in 1993, the internet started expanding, the web began, and that presented a massive opportunity for the world to change. A world without connectivity is hard to imagine now. But the world back then was like that.”
“The internet expanded a thousand folds than we had anticipated,” he remarks, “and so did Check Point.” I am taking to Shwed from CPX 360, his company’s meeting in New Orleans. A couple of thousand representatives are endorsed for cyber breakouts and keynotes.
I inquire from him concerning the conference because it is an exciting period for the sector on most levels. “It is busier and hectic compared to any other time in the past,” he remarks, “but it is not to be expected-it’s a cyber-audience.” On the background, news is continuously talking about Russia’s and China’s undermining campaigns against the United States and its allies, just a short time after Suleimani and the heightened threat from the Islamic Republic of Iran. A few days past, the U.S was infuriated by Britain’s decision on the Chinese tech giant, Huawei.
Showed is the man behind the invention of the Computer firewall. “I was residing in a tiny country, Israel,” he says. “We all felt isolated from the entire world. The internet seemed like a big revolution. But what about security? How do we restrict access from anyone outside our network? We asked ourselves. So, we initiated Check Point.”
Check Point has made its own headlines in the last couple of weeks, emphasizing its mantra of “Prevention over Detection,” uncovering vital weaknesses in WhatsApp, Zoom, Microsoft Azure, and even Philips smart light bulbs. The team conducting the research is on a mission; it seems to show that nearly everything is hackable, the concerns are displayed, disclosed responsibly, repaired, and published.
