Clever Geek Handbook

Check Point Gaia R80.40. What will be new?





The next release of the Gaia R80.40 operating system is approaching . A few weeks ago , the Early Access program was launched , according to which you can get access to test the distribution. We, as usual, publish information about what will be new, and also highlight the points that are most interesting from our point of view. Looking ahead, I can say that the innovations are really significant. Therefore, it is worth preparing for an early update procedure. We have previously published an article on how to do this (for more information, please click here ). Let's move on to the topic ...



What's new



Consider the officially announced innovations here. Information taken from Check Mates website (official Check Point community). With your permission, I will not translate this text, since the audience allows this. Instead, I will leave my comments in the next chapter.



1. IoT Security. New features that relate to the Internet of things
  • Collect IoT devices and traffic attributes from certified IoT discovery engines (currently supports Medigate, CyberMDX, Cynerio, Claroty, Indegy, SAM and Armis).
  • Configure a new IoT dedicated Policy Layer in policy management.
  • Configure and manage security rules that are based on the IoT devices' attributes.




2. TLS Inspection
HTTP / 2:



  • HTTP / 2 is an update to the HTTP protocol. The update provides improvements to speed, efficiency and security and results with a better user experience.
  • Check Point's Security Gateway now support HTTP / 2 and benefits better speed and efficiency while getting full security, with all Threat Prevention and Access Control blades, as well as new protections for the HTTP / 2 protocol.
  • Support is for both clear and SSL encrypted traffic and is fully integrated with HTTPS / TLS
  • Inspection capabilities.


TLS Inspection Layer . Innovations regarding HTTPS inspection:



  • A new Policy Layer in SmartConsole dedicated to TLS Inspection.
  • Different TLS Inspection layers can be used in different policy packages.
  • Sharing of a TLS Inspection layer across multiple policy packages.
  • API for TLS operations.




3. Threat Prevention
  • Overall efficiency enhancement for Threat Prevention processes and updates.
  • Automatic updates to Threat Extraction Engine.
  • Dynamic, Domain and Updatable Objects can now be used in Threat Prevention and TLS Inspection policies. Updatable objects are network objects that represent an external service or a known dynamic list of IP addresses, for example - Office365 / Google / Azure / AWS IP addresses and Geo objects.
  • Anti-Virus now uses SHA-1 and SHA-256 threat indications to block files based on their hashes. Import the new indicators from the SmartConsole Threat Indicators view or the Custom Intelligence Feed CLI.
  • Anti-Virus and SandBlast Threat Emulation now support inspection of e-mail traffic over the POP3 protocol, as well as improved inspection of e-mail traffic over the IMAP protocol.
  • Anti-Virus and SandBlast Threat Emulation now use the newly introduced SSH inspection feature to inspect files transferred over the SCP and SFTP protocols.
  • Anti-Virus and SandBlast Threat Emulation now provide an improved support for SMBv3 inspection (3.0, 3.0.2, 3.1.1), which includes inspection of multi-channel connections. Check Point is now the only vendor to support inspection of a file transfer through multiple channels (a feature that is on-by-default in all Windows environments). This allows customers to stay secure while working with this performance enhancing feature.




4. Identity Awareness
  • Support for Captive Portal integration with SAML 2.0 and third party Identity Providers.
  • Support for Identity Broker for scalable and granular sharing of identity information between PDPs, as well as cross-domain sharing.
  • Enhancements to Terminal Servers Agent for better scaling and compatibility.




5. IPsec VPN
  • Configure different VPN encryption domains on a Security Gateway that is a member of multiple VPN communities. This provides:
  • Improved privacy - Internal networks are not disclosed in IKE protocol negotiations.
  • Improved security and granularity - Specify which networks are accessible in a specified VPN community.
  • Improved interoperability - Simplified route-based VPN definitions (recommended when you work with an empty VPN encryption domain).
  • Create and seamlessly work with a Large Scale VPN (LSV) environment with the help of LSV profiles.




6. URL Filtering
  • Improved scalability and resilience.
  • Extended troubleshooting capabilities.




7. NAT
  • Enhanced NAT port allocation mechanism - on Security Gateways with 6 or more CoreXL Firewall instances, all instances use the same pool of NAT ports, which optimizes the port utilization and reuse.
  • NAT port utilization monitoring in CPView and with SNMP.




8. Voice over IP (VoIP)
Multiple CoreXL Firewall instances handle the SIP protocol to enhance performance.



9. Remote Access VPN
Use machine certificate to distinguish between corporate and non-corporate assets and to set a policy enforcing the use of corporate assets only. Enforcement can be pre-logon (device authentication only) or post-logon (device and user authentication).



10. Mobile Access Portal Agent
Enhanced Endpoint Security on Demand within the Mobile Access Portal Agent to support all major web browsers. For more information, see sk113410.



11. CoreXL and Multi-Queue
  • Support for automatic allocation of CoreXL SNDs and Firewall instances that does not require a Security Gateway reboot.
  • Improved out of the box experience - Security Gateway automatically changes the number of CoreXL SNDs and Firewall instances and the Multi-Queue configuration based on the current traffic load.




12. Clustering
  • Support for Cluster Control Protocol in Unicast mode that eliminates the need for CCP


Broadcast or Multicast modes:

  • Cluster Control Protocol encryption is now enabled by default.
  • New ClusterXL mode -Active / Active, which supports Cluster Members in different geographic locations that are located on different subnets and have different IP addresses.
  • Support for ClusterXL Cluster Members that run different software versions.
  • Eliminated the need for MAC Magic configuration when several clusters are connected to the same subnet.




13. VSX
  • Support for VSX upgrade with CPUSE in Gaia Portal.
  • Support for Active Up mode in VSLS.
  • Support for CPView statistical reports for each Virtual System




14. Zero Touch
A simple Plug & Play setup process for installing an appliance - eliminating the need for technical expertise and having to connect to the appliance for initial configuration.



15. Gaia REST API
Gaia REST API provides a new way to read and send information to servers that run Gaia Operating System. See sk143612.



16. Advanced Routing
  • Enhancements to OSPF and BGP allow to reset and restart OSPF adjacent for each CoreXL Firewall instance without the need to restart the routed daemon.
  • Enhancing route refresh for improved handling of BGP routing inconsistencies.




17. New kernel capabilities
  • Upgraded Linux kernel
  • New partitioning system (gpt):
  • Supports more than 2TB physical / logical drives
  • Faster file system (xfs)
  • Supporting larger system storage (up to 48TB tested)
  • I / O related performance improvements
  • Multi-Queue:
  • Full Gaia Clish support for Multi-Queue commands
  • Automatic "on by default" configuration
  • SMB v2 / 3 mount support in Mobile Access blade
  • Added NFSv4 (client) support (NFS v4.2 is the default NFS version used)
  • Support of new system tools for debugging, monitoring and configuring the system




18. CloudGuard Controller
  • Performance enhancements for connections to external Data Centers.
  • Integration with VMware NSX-T.
  • Support for additional API commands to create and edit Data Center Server objects.




19. Multi-Domain Server
  • Back up and restore an individual Domain Management Server on a Multi-Domain Server.
  • Migrate a Domain Management Server on one Multi-Domain Server to a different Multi-Domain Security Management.
  • Migrate a Security Management Server to become a Domain Management Server on a Multi-Domain Server.
  • Migrate a Domain Management Server to become a Security Management Server.
  • Revert a Domain on a Multi-Domain Server, or a Security Management Server to a previous revision for further editing.




20. SmartTasks and API
  • New Management API authentication method that uses an auto-generated API Key.
  • New Management API commands to create cluster objects.
  • Central Deployment of Jumbo Hotfix Accumulator and Hotfixes from SmartConsole or with an API allows to install or upgrade multiple Security Gateways and Clusters in parallel.
  • SmartTasks - Configure automatic scripts or HTTPS requests triggered by administrator tasks, such as publishing a session or installing a policy.




21. Deployment
Central Deployment of Jumbo Hotfix Accumulator and Hotfixes from SmartConsole or with an API allows to install or upgrade multiple Security Gateways and Clusters in parallel.



22. SmartEvent
Share SmartView views and reports with other administrators.



23. Log Exporter
Export logs filtered according to field values.



24. Endpoint Security
  • Support for BitLocker encryption for Full Disk Encryption.
  • Support for external Certificate Authority certificates for Endpoint Security client
  • authentication and communication with the Endpoint Security Management Server.
  • Support for dynamic size of Endpoint Security Client packages based on the selected
  • features for deployment.
  • Policy can now control level of notifications to end users.
  • Support for Persistent VDI environment in Endpoint Policy Management.




What we liked best (based on customer tasks)



As you can see, there are a lot of innovations. But for us, as a system integrator , there are some very interesting points (which are also interesting to our customers). Our Top 10:



  1. Finally came full support for IoT devices. It is already quite difficult to meet a company that would not have such devices.
  2. TLS inspection is now in a separate layer (Layer). It is much more convenient than now (at 80.30). You no longer need to run the old Legasy Dashboard. Plus, now in the HTTPS inspection policy you can use Updatable objects, such as Office365, Google, Azure, AWS, etc. This is very convenient when you need to configure exceptions. However, there is still no support for tls 1.3. Apparently “catching up” with the following hotfix.
  3. Significant changes for Anti-Virus and SandBlast. Now you can check protocols such as SCP, SFTP and SMBv3 (by the way, nobody can check this multichannel protocol anymore).
  4. A lot of improvements that relate to Site-to-Site VPN. Now you can configure multiple VPN domains on the gateway, which consists of several VPN communities. It is very convenient and much safer. In addition, Check Point finally remembered Route Based VPN and slightly improved its stability / compatibility.
  5. A very popular feature has appeared for remote users. Now you can authenticate not only the user, but also the device from which he connects. For example, we want to allow VPN connections only from corporate devices. This is done of course with the help of certificates. It has also become possible to automatically mount (SMB v2 / 3) file balls for remote users with a VPN client.
  6. A lot of changes in the operation of the cluster. But perhaps one of the most interesting is the ability to operate a cluster, where the gateways have different versions of Gaia. This is convenient for a planned upgrade.
  7. Improved features of Zero Touch. A useful thing for those who often install "small" gateways (for example, for ATMs).
  8. For logs, storage is now supported up to 48TB.
  9. You can “fumble” your SmartEvent dashboards with other administrators.
  10. Log Exporter now allows you to prefilter sent messages by fields. Those. only the necessary logs and events will pass to your SIEM systems


Update



Perhaps many are already thinking about updating. Do not rush. To get started, version 80.40 should go to General Availability. But even after that it’s not worth updating immediately. It’s better to wait at least for the first hotfix.

Perhaps many "sit" on older versions. I can say that at least it is already possible (and even necessary) to upgrade to 80.30. This is a stable and proven system!



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