Check Point

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Check Point Software Technologies Ltd.

Type of Company	Public (NASDAQ: CHKP)
Founded	1993
Headquarters	Ramat Gan, Israel
Key people	Gil Shwed, Founder, CEO Marius Nacht, Founder
Industry	Network security Computer software Computer hardware
Revenue	US$ 579.3 million (2005) ^[1]
Net income	US$ 319.7 million (2005) ^[1]
Employees	1,400 (2005?)
Website	www.checkpoint.com

Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. NASDAQ: CHKP is a software company that is best known for its firewall and VPN products. The company was founded in 1993 in Ramat-Gan, Israel, and has approximately 1400 employees. Check Point development center centres are located in Israel and in Belarus. They also have offices in Redwood City, California and in the Dallas, Texas area. Due to their heavy presence in the United States, the company often bills itself as being of a binational nature.

Check Point acquired SofaWare Technologies in 1999. SofaWare was founded in 1999 in Ramat-Gan, Israel. SofaWare’s embedded software powers Internet security appliances, DSL and Wi-Fi routers as well as broadband modems from companies such as Nokia, NEC and Toshiba, as well as Check Point’s Safe@Office and VPN-1 Edge security appliance.

Check Point acquired Zone Labs in 2004. In October, 2005, Check Point announced it would acquire Sourcefire, the developers of Snort for $225 million. Both the Department of Defense and the FBI objected to the acquisition due to national security concerns. The acquisition was pending during an investigation by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), but was announced to have collapsed over security concerns related to the "Snort" software which guards some classified U.S. military and intelligence computers. [1] The acquisition has been since withdrawn [2].

[edit] Major Products

FireWall-1/VPN-1 Firewall/VPN Software running on open servers and various security appliances, including Nokia
Connectra An SSL-VPN product
Integrity Endpoint Security software
Safe@Office Internet Security Appliance
VPN-1 Edge Internet Security Appliance
InterSpect Internal Network Security Appliance
ZoneAlarm Desktop Firewall
Provider-1 Centralised Management Solution for Check Point Products
Eventia Analyser Security Event Management Software