Hello and welcome back to Check Point Jump Start Training. In this module, we're going to look at support. How do you access support resources as well as documentation, detailed documentation on the technical and logistical and operational aspects of Check Point deployment? Last but certainly not least, where do you go for more training on Check Point? This jump start series does not go into depth, does not go into detail, and also does not cover a lot of the Check Point, most of the Check Point products and their functionality. So we're going to look at UserCenter, which is check point's support site and the documentation that's available, as well as CheckMates, which is a social site for Check Point employees, subject matter experts, partner companies, as well as customers. Then Check Point training courses that are available and the certifications that you can earn from attending the training courses and then passing an exam. We'll demonstrate where you can find this and some of the aspects of this. So UserCenter is Check Point's support site. The URL is fairly straight forward and there are multiple ways to get to the support site, you can simply go to checkpoint.com and click on "Support" or supportcenter.checkpoint.com. One of the most commonly used components of UserCenter is the SecureKnowledge database, which contains technical articles, descriptions of software releases, solutions for specific problems that customers have reported. So that is typically my first stop. If I see an error message or if I don't understand how to do something with some component of the Check Point product line, I have a bookmark that takes me directly to SecureKnowledge and I will paste in the error message or type my description of what it is I'm looking for and the search results are categorized. Here's SecureKnowledge articles. Here is technical documentation that may cover what you're searching for. Here are software downloads that are related to your search query. Now, some parts of UserCenter require an account, a UserCenter account to access. Your UserCenter account will be tied to your employer's e-mail address, whatever that is. Also in UserCenter, software downloads such as a new release of the Check Point software, for instance, R80.30, R80.40, or hotfixes which are patches to address some specific issue. There are also what are called HFAs, Hotfix Accumulators which are a package of hotfixes that have been well-tested and are appropriate for you to install, not only to fix an ongoing issue, but to avoid other issues. So one can just routinely install hotfixes according to your maintenance schedule. There's also a licensing portal where you can search for licenses that are associated with your company, with your appliances. Depending on the nature of the licenses, you can assign licenses to other devices. Service requests are requests for help. So it could be because you have some hardware issue, I have a failed power supply or a hard drive has stopped working, I need it replaced. Can also be related to software. This isn't working the way I expected, I'm getting this weird error message that I don't understand and a quick SecureKnowledge search didn't provide anything helpful, or licensing issues. Request for assistance with UserCenter access itself. All of these can be done via service requests. If you, for instance, open a service request for some software issue, there are tools both GUI-based and command line-based that can gather useful, necessary information, tag that information with your current service request number, upload that information securely to Check Point support site where only Check Point support engineers and if you have a partner that's doing your Check Point support for you, authorized partners, support engineers can access. That's a pretty common thing. There's a command line command called CPinfo, one word, C-P-I-N-F-O, that is frequently requested when you open a service request or we're going to need details and the CPinfo provides one-stop upload of details. You provide CPinfo with your service request number. You can also subscribe to news, to articles that match keywords. So for instance, if you want to keep an eye on URL filtering changes, you can subscribe to anything on UserCenter that's new that relates to URL filtering. UserCenter provides comprehensive, technical documentation on all facets of the entire Check Point product line. So here is an administration guide for your security gateway. So here is an administration guide for your VPN setup. Also available are detailed per-version release notes, which are mandatory reading if you are considering installing, say a new release of the Check Point product, R80.40 has been announced, it's available for download. I think I might like to transition from R80.20 to R80.40. Access the release notes for R80.40, read them. The release notes contain all of the new features, bugs that have been fixed, issues that remain in that release and workarounds for those issues, also compatibility matrices, which will tell you you can upgrade from this version of Check Point to this release, or you can only upgrade under these circumstances. Here are some gotchas, here are some things to look out for during the upgrade process. Detailed upgrade instructions are also available in the documentation. Troubleshooting guides. If you see this issue with, say, a VPN deployment, here's a flow chart to follow to identify the source of the issue, the cause of the issue and correct it, plus technical white papers that go into, for instance, how stateful inspection works, how you can tune the performance of your security gateways, how this component of the management server works. Another incredible resource is CheckMates. This is a social site for Check Point employees, Check Point subject matter experts, Check Point partners, and Check Point users where every aspect of the Check Point product line is available for questions or complaints for how to request and more. Most of the content is freely available, but some content requires that you have a UserCenter account, same username and password as the support site also used on the CheckMate community site. So some things that I want to call out on CheckMate, CheckMate Nuggets, which is a topic on the CheckMate site. These are articles written by internal Check Point employees who are subject matter experts, it might be the developer associated with a particular feature, it might be an engineer who has extensive knowledge of this feature and they will write articles on a specific topic related to Check Point. I want to say that these nuggets are distinguished by the expertise and the insight that they provide on the subject matter. Another great resource that's available from CheckMates, especially for those that are new to Check Point who might be attending this jump start training is Check Point for Beginners, abbreviated CP4B. This is an awesome, detailed, extensive getting started guide or set of guides that include technical descriptions of the topic as well as videos and also available from Check Point for Beginners. Some scripts, some utilities that have been written by Check Point experts who may be Check Point employees but often our partners, Check Point users, those who are widely recognized as being subject matter experts but don't work for Check Point are contributing to the Check Point for Beginners series. Now, last again, but certainly not least, where do you go for more training? Well, you can go to the Check Point website, just checkpoint.com, click on "Support". Then there is a training link there. Direct URL is training-certifications.checkpoint.com. I want to call out two specific Check Point training courses: CCSA; the Check Point's Certified Security Administrator, and CCSE; Check Point Certified Security Expert. These are each three day courses that are instructor-led with hands-on labs. So you will attend physically in a classroom or, optionally, you will attend virtually via some web-based meeting, but an instructor will present the course material to you live, in real time, and you can ask questions, you can ask for clarification. Also, labs have been constructed to take you through the steps of, for instance, installing Check Point, or configuring Check Point, or setting up a security policy, or whatever. So the Check Point training courses are not delivered by Check Point, we used authorized training centers, ATCs. There are Check Point ATCs around the world. There's one local to you, almost certainly. At this training-certifications website, you can search for the class that you want, the time period that you want, in the location that you want. It will display the ATCs who are offering that class during that time period in this location. So CCSA and CCSE are the core classes that anyone who is going to be working with Check Point should consider attending. They come with certifications or there are corresponding certifications; CCSA and CCSE certifications. Certifications are earned by passing a high-stakes exam that is administered either at a testing center or there are other options, but you have to go somewhere, sit for the exam. You will be proctored, you will be monitored. Then upon completion of the exam, you'll be told whether or not you passed. The CCSE in particular, the Check Point's Certified Security Expert, is very widely known in the industry. If you have that certification, well, that looks really good on your resume. There are other product courses or specialist courses that focus on a specific aspect of the Check Point product line, such as the Check Point Certified Automation Specialist. This is something that was really expanded in R80, the ability to automate, write scripts or batch files to perform some routine task without you having to type in the command sequence. So for instance, if you need to create 200 objects that are identical, except, well, they each differ in the object name, -001, -002, and say the IP address of the object, 192.168.12.1.2.3. That would be extremely tedious to create a large number of these objects annually using the smart console GUI. The Automation API provides a way to do that via script. Then, new classes, the Check Point's Certified Troubleshooting Technologist and Troubleshooting Expert correspond to CCSA and CCSE. CCSA introduces you to various aspects of the Check Point product and give you hands-on experience at configuring and managing that product. The Troubleshooting Technologist course is a two-day course that expands on the topics from CCSA, and give you instructions on how to troubleshoot issues with those topics, those features, those components from CCSA. The CCTE, the Troubleshooting Expert course corresponds to CCSE, and gives you hands-on troubleshooting experience for the topics, the components, the features that are covered by CCSE. There are other product training courses for end-point security or the multi-domain management, feature of Check Point, the virtual systems extension of Check Point, and others, all available in the training schedule, the training catalog at this training site. So I just want to focus a little bit on the CCSA and CCSE courses, again, because they're core courses that everyone who's going to be administrating in Check Point should attend. So here's just the list of topics from the current version of the CCSA class, and that class is updated with new versions of Check Point. R80.40 comes around or R80.50 or who knows, R90, then CCSA and CCSE courses will be updated soon after the release of these products with updated content. But this is what is currently in the class. So an introduction to Check Point, then a lot of stuff that we covered without nearly the detail in this jumpstart training series, how policy management is performed, is accomplished, layers, and how they work, licensing Check Point. Then, how do you see what's going on with your Check Point deployment? Looking at log files, log entries, and so on. Virtual Private Networks, and this is mostly the site-to-site component, where you have your headquarters, and you have a branch office, employees at the branch office need internal network access at headquarters, site-to-site VPN can provide that identity-based policy, clustering and automation. The Security Expert course, another three-day course, we talked about managing your Check Point deployment, more in depth automation, some redundancy and performance options. We looked at SmartEvent, we looked at Mobile and Remote Access VPNs, where in CCSA, we focused on site-to-site headquarters to this branch office. In CCSE, we expand that to include an employee with a laptop who is traveling or is working from home. They need internal network access, that can be accomplished via mobile access, which uses web-based VPN technology, or remote access, which uses a dedicated client. Finally, in CCSE, we spend some time on threat prevention. Recall that, there are two major categories of policy in Check Point. There are access control policies and threat prevention policies. Threat prevention includes, intrusion prevention, the anti-bot, antivirus, and others. That's covered in CCSE. So these two courses, CCSA and CCSE, should be your next stop. We're going to demonstrate where you can find the resources that I've talked about, such as the support site, users center, checkmates, and the training courses. So I wanted to demonstrate a couple of things. First is, creating a service request, which you can get to by going to Check Point's website, and just clicking on "Support" and then "Create a Service Request". That's how I got here. I also like to note that at the top left, it says, PartnerMAP. You can ignore that, it's just the account that I'm signed into. So you have several choices for the type of service request that you wish to place. Depending on what type of service request, you will be prompted for different information. I'm not going to proceed with creating a service requests because I don't have anything that needs service. Next, we'll look at accessing some of the knowledge base articles, documentation, software downloads, and so on. So I went to Support Center and I'm going to search for, say, a particular version of a Check Point. So here under the secure knowledge tab, there's a lot of secure knowledge articles that were returned because they mentioned R80.30 and download, this first one by the way, sk114293 is the number 1 result because it talks about R80.30. What's knew, where to get documentation, where to get software all in one place. But also there's another tab, downloads, which is specifically downloads that are available that reference R80.30 documentation for R80.30. Next, I just wanted to spend a little bit of time on the CheckMate website. So again, the URL for that is community.Check Point.com. Some content you must be logged in to view and it's the same credentials, username, and password as Check Points support site. So CheckMate, I had mentioned Check Point for beginners, this is an incredible resource, or those that are new to Check Point, as well as those that just need a little bit of free training on some particular aspect such as threat prevention or application controller or what have you. It includes some excellent videos. Also up here, are the best of CheckMate. This is user selected community voted recognition of those who participate in the CheckMate site, but also focusing on articles postings. So just a quick tour of CheckMate and finally, I wanted to just point out the Training Certification website, which is training-certifications.checkpoint.com. You can also get there under support and services, Training and Certification from the Check Point MainPage. So scrolling down past hacking point, which is online Instructor-led training on a specific task cyber range, which is you are attacking some defended site, or you defend a site that's being attacked. I want to scroll down to the core training and I had mentioned the Check Points Certified Administrator and Check Points Certified Expert courses. There's a third one over here, Check Points Certified Master, that's going away, that's been deprecated and is instead being replaced by what we call product training or specialists courses. So CCSA, this should be your next stop and you can select the class that's right for you. So for instance, here in North America, there are several courses that are being offered by various authorized training centers. So you can select the course that you want and then pay for that course using either what's called a CLC, which is a Cyber Learning Credit, which is something that your company can purchase from Check Point or from a Check Point partner and redeem it for training, depending on the length of the course that determines the number of cyber learning credits that are required. You can also pay just by a credit card if you want. That's it. Thank you. So in this module, we looked at resources for Check Point administrators, such as the Check Point support site, UserCenter, as well as the documentation that's available at UserCenter. The CheckMates forum social site for Check Point employs, Check Point partners, Check Point users, and your next stop. The Check Point training courses that are available again, CCSA Check Point, Certified Security Administrator, CCSE Check Point, Certified Security Expert, and the corresponding certifications. We demonstrated how to find some of this stuff. So that completes this Jump Start module. Thank you very much for attending.
