On Tuesday, cybersecurity firm Check Point held an online presentation for their partners where their senior executives outlined their strategic vision, where channel partners fit in, the impact of recent acquisitions share bold insights and strategic direction. The emphasis was strongly on partners as the fulcrum of the go-to-market strategy, and the Check Point executives detailed to partners how they could best take advantage of the opportunities Check Point is making available.
Nadav Zafrir, Check Point’s relatively recently appointed CEO, laid out his vision for the company and its partner strategy going forward, with particular emphasis on what he termed the need for brutal honesty.
“I’ve been here for eight months, and coming here is opportunity to have a large impact at scale,” Zafrir said. “I’m super excited to be here.”
He emphasized that today’s competitive environment was much more vicious than in the past.
“We are in a real battle zone,” Zafrir stated. Typically, our competitors play by the rules. Attackers today do not compete with us. We need to stay ahead of curve by being brutally honest with ourselves, our partners and our customers. On the product side, we need to move faster, innovate faster and be less shy about what we do, We need to put marketing dollars and investment in there.”
Zafrir explained how all this translates into a more profitable environment.
“Coming from the startup world, we would focus on what’s coming. There are now new attacks daily, but the old ones are here to stay. That surprised me a bit, so our focus has evolved. Consolidating makes sense, but we need to have an open platform, so we have the ability to bring in other best of breed products and not have a monolithic approach.
Zafir cited an example involving a very large customer from the banking industry.
“Coming from the startup world, we would focus on what’s coming. There are now new attacks daily, but the old ones are here to stay. That surprised me a bit, so our focus has evolved. Consolidating makes sense, but we need to have an open platform, so we have the ability to bring in other best of breed products and not have a monolithic approach.
Zafir cited an example involving a very large customer from the banking industry.
“Two weeks into my tenure, we had a major problem with a large customer,” he said. “It was brutal. Every 12 hours for two weeks, the power went out. And yet the experience strengthened our relationship because they said we galvanized to support them. That’s because sense of urgency and customer obsession were our focus.”
Zafir summed this all up.
“We are overinvesting in making our customer’s lives easier. The world will change in ways we can’t even imagine, so we are investing in understanding the threat landscape. We are 100 percent partner and will stay that way. It’s the only way to scale.”
Eyal Manor, VP Product Management, provided a product and roadmap update, and how Check Point is with Eyal Manor, VP Product Management, evolving to meet tomorrow’s challenges.
“Our focus is on protecting the hybrid mesh network,” Manor said, “Customers now have to manage each product individually. They don’t want this. They want one place to manage network security connectivity, and that is the hybrid mesh, and not point product, Hybrid mesh is also a much more strategic discussion we can have with our customers. It gives customers a simple way to manage connected environments. This broader solution requires customers to explain the value, but we can train you to do this.”
Francisco Criado, VP, Global Partner Ecosystems at Check Point, expanded on this strategy,
“We go to market around hybrid mesh, leveraging strategic alliances, and developing MSP practices. “We have one of the better ones across the community. Developing that differentiation is hard because cybersecurty is hard. It’s hard to focus on one area.”
“After 30 years we got arrogant with our partners, so we reset ourselves,” said Ital Greenberg, Strategy & GTM Vision for Workspace and Chief Revenue Officer. We have to stay very loyal to our partners, and partners need to take advantage of certifications,”
“We are seeing investment in retail in targeted markets like warehousing” said Avi Rembaum , Vice President of Security Solutions for Check Point. There is a broader understanding of targeted attacks in our employees are seeing increased momentum in workspace solutions.