Check Point Software Technologies Inc’s president and chief executive officer Deborah Triant says her company has long been dogged by rumors that its firewall product isn’t secure because the Israeli government – which spawned the company – has the ability to break through it. Triant says she’s aware that there are those who think the company has lost contracts with governmental organizations over such concerns, but that there’s no truth to it. She insists that she knows of no such lost contracts and points out that Check Point does business with many government-affiliated organizations throughout Europe, the Middle East and the US, including the US Department of Defense. The persistence of rumors that only the Israeli government is privy to the source code was one of the main reasons that last month Check Point started working with the National Security Agency on a source code walk-through. The company is hoping the work with the NSA will send the message that its products are secure and not unusually susceptible to intrusion from any more privileged parties. Triant says the company makes its source code available to every such government client, as well as to major corporate partners such as Sun Microsystems Inc and Bay Networks Inc.
