While Check Point’s original Harmony product came from a 2021 acquisition, the technology that specifically became Harmony SaaS came in a September 2023 acquisition, and is now formally available following its integration into the Check Point platform.
Jeremy Fuchs, Harmony Email Security Researcher and Analyst at Check Point
LAS VEGAS – At Check Point’s CDX 2024 event here, one of the new product announcements made was the formal introduction of Harmony SaaS, designed to offer protection against SaaS threats in a market where the use of SaaS applications continues to grow at a massive level.
“Harmony itself was actually acquired by Check Point back in 2021 with Avanan, a New York-based startup which had been previously OEM’d by Check Point,” said Jeremy Fuchs, Harmony Email Security Researcher and Analyst at Check Point. Fuchs was part of that acquisition.
“Once we were acquired, we were rebranded as Harmony eMail, and have seen tremendous growth since,” Fuchs added. “We have continued to add new features while keeping the core of the platform intact.”
Harmony SaaS was not actually part of the Avanan acquisition, but came with the purchase last fall of Atmosec, an early stage start-up that Check Point acquired.
“Following the acquisition, we are now announcing the availability of product,” Fuchs said. “It has been rebranded as Harmony SaaS.”
What Harmony SaaS does is go beyond what Harmony did in terms of the rapid discovery and disconnection of malicious SaaS applications, preventing risky third party SaaS communications, and rectifying SaaS misconfigurations.
“With the SaaS services, there are a lot of things that can go wrong, from awry tokens to insecure configurations,” Fuchs said. “It also takes the handling of Shadow IT to the next level. It’s one thing to be able to tell IT that I’m using Dropbox, but it’s quite another to be able to inform IT of early detection. This becomes another tool in the toolcase.” It is paid for separately from Harmony.”
Fuchs said the nature of the companies who will find Harmony SaaS very useful is based on the model of the company, with companies who use more SaaS services getting proportionately more benefits.
“A lot of companies use a lot of different services to get their work done, especially AI-powered SaaS tools,” he indicated. But all SaaS companies, from small to large, will benefit to some degree. It makes businesses more secure, and makes it easier for security admins.”
Check Point sells entirely through the channel, and Fuchs said the reaction to Harmony SaaS across the range of Check Point Partners has been positive.
“We are seeing a lot of excitement from partners, distis and MSPs around the world,” he stated. “This lets them keep it simple and just let the product go to work. An API-based connection takes 30 seconds. Configuring a gateway can be a little complicated,” but this is really a super-easy install.”
Fuchs also emphasized that Harmony SaaS is very easy to use,
“SaaS has to be transparent,” he said. “You need to chose a technology with the best experience so people will use it rather than try and work around it. You don’t have to move traffic to the cloud all the time. So we see the market for this as very strong, even despite growing competition in the email security space, because everyone sells email security.”
Fuchs also said to look for more interesting products coming from Check Point in this space.
“There is some exciting stuff coming,” he stated. “The theme around it from me is that we want to make it even more simple and effective, and that we will leverage a lot of AI to do so.”
Check Point Harmony SaaS is available now.
