Tech Watch | InfoWorld Staff » CheckPoint won't lay low after SourceFire smackdown

March 31, 2006 | Comments: (0)

CheckPoint won't lay low after SourceFire smackdown

TAGS: Security

You might think that getting a US $225 million acquisition stuffed back in your face by the 7'1" center that is the U.S. government's Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) might prompt one to cool off on the bench for a bit or, hell, at least dust off that fading jump shot.

But not plucky Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. of Ramat Gan, Israel. According to Ken Fitzpatrick, CMO at CheckPoint, the company is asking for the ball and won't be shy about driving the lane again when and if it gets a pass.

"We're developing a lot of technology around internal security," Fitzpatrick told InfoWorld earlier this week, "and that includes IDS and IDP," Fitzpatrick said.

If you remember, Check Point was forced to withdraw its bid to acquire Sourcefire last week after CFIUS -- the same geniuses who gave a thumbs up to the takeover of six U.S. ports by Dubai Ports World, a company owned in part by the United Arab Emirates. That tempest in a teapot subsided after the company offered to transfer management of the U.S. ports to a U.S. company, but the Check Point deal was collateral damage, according to some insiders.

Others told InfoWorld that the "bad timing" argument was wishful thinking, and that the Sourcefire deal was probably doomed to rejection by CFIUS from the getgo.

Sourcefire's SNORT IPS technology was way too important a part of the government's cyber defenses to ever allow it to fall into the hands of an Israeli company. Check Point was to blame itself, according to this logic, because the company never really diversified its development operation, keeping most of the important work in Israel and leaving its U.S. offices to sales and marketing. A more truly global company might not have raised flags with the CFIUS folks -- especially over a product that has its roots in open source, which means that everyone has access to the SNORT source code.

"Hogwash," says Fitzpatrick. Check Point is a totally global company with a major development in the U.S., in the form of its Zone Labs holdings in San Francisco, not to mention a development shop in Belarus. Okay...let's just put that Belarus thing aside for a second, and remember that Check Point paid more than $200 million for Zone back in 2003 and the company's former HQ is now the center of Check Point's work on desktop and endpoint security technology.

Whatever. It's all water under the bridge for the companies now, anyway. And Fitzpatrick says that Check Point is focused on the future. For CP and Sourcefire, that means working on "alternative partnerships" -- a fishy term that could mean anything from reseller agreements to tightly integrating Sourcefire's IPS with Check Point's perimeter, secure remote access and unified security management products to create "smart defenses" that can spot threats both inside and outside a network.

"You have to be quick and nimble," Fitzpatrick said. Foregoing a drawn out CFIUS review and steaming ahead with integration as separate companies (Sourcefire was already a Check Point OPSEC partner) may turn out to be the fastest way to get products in customers' hands, he said.

But Check Point is looking beyond Sourcefire and Snort, as well, and isn't sweathing another trip down CFIUS Lane.

"If we saw another opportunity in the U.S. for a technology company, we would pursue that," Fitzgerald said. "This is all Check Point does," he offered by way of explanation "We do security...(the failure of the Sourcefire deal) is not going to stop us from looking at acquisitions in the U.S."

In the meantime, Check Point has been busy fielding "an abnormal amount" of inquiries from security companies. Like the beautiful girl who's lucky enough to finish second on The Bachelorette, Check Point finds itself with an embarassment of suitors, many of them IPS companies based outside of the U.S., Fitzpatrick said.

"When we announced the Sourcefire deal, we let the industry know that we felt, for our customers, that this technology will be well-suited for what our customers and partners need. Now that we've withdrawn our CFIUS request, other IDS and IPS companies are calling," he said.

Most of those companies, Fitzpatrick noted, were outside the U.S.

pfr

Posted by Paul Roberts on March 31, 2006 12:20 PM

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