The Feds Reject Checkpoint Buyout of SourceFire

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The best firewall in the world is owned by an Israeli company, Checkpoint. Its more robust than Cisco Pix, easier to manage, more versatile, and it works with most other security products more easily than Cisco.

Snort, an open source Intrusion Detection System, was spun off into its own company, SourceFire, and it is still the best Intrusion Detection System around, bar none. Snort is very easy to use and you can write custom detection filters on the fly.

When you combine both the Checkpoint and Snort into a solution, your enterprise network is pretty secure.

But the Federal Government will not allow SourceFire to be sold to Checkpoint.

From the Register here:

A takeover bid by an Israeli firewall firm has become the latest victim of US security protectionism. Check Point Software has dropped its bid for US rival Sourcefire after objections from the FBI and Pentagon were heard by the Treasury’s Committee on Foreign Investments.

The Committee has also overseen the recent rumpus surrounding the Dubai carve-up of P&O, which would put Arab business in control of US ports.

Federal agency objections to the security software tie-up center on the implementation of Sourcefire’s anti-intrusion software ‘Snort’ by the Bureau and Department of Defense, AP reports. In private meetings between the panel and Check Point, FBI and Pentagon officials took exception to letting foreigners acquire the sensitive technology.

If the $225m deal had gone ahead as announced back in October, Check Point would have got the rights to all patents and source code. Check Point says the two companies will find ways round the roadblock.

I have worked all around the Federal IT space. The US Government does not use Checkpoint Products. Instead, they use outdated firewalls like old-timey Raptors or other kluged-together old DoD products. Most modern agencies use Pixes. Most of the DoD now uses Cisco products as well. But no Checkpoint Technology allowed. Checkpoint apparantly does not even compete for the Federal dollar for firewall security.

Why? Well, the exact reason is supposedly classified. Rumors have swirled for years that there is an insidious Israeli backdoor in the firewalls. Which may have been the case one day long ago, but the claims seem dubious to persist to this day. Properly managed, there is no way to hack into a Checkpoint Firewall. There are other attacks against the network, like a Denial of Service, DNS poisoning, etc, but unless you are an authorized IP address to manage the firewall, you will not break into it.

It is telling that the DoD and the FBI were the ones that testified that this deal should not go down between Checkpoint and Sourcefire. The fears are obvious, however- The United States is afraid, that should there be a cyberwar, they do not want to risk allowing the Israelis having the opportunity to have seeded their products with crippling code that could render American Enterprises and critical infrastructures inert.

But running enterprises with security products that are inferior, less durable and less resilient to attack is the greater risk.

American Protectionism wins again to America’s detriment.