en.Wedoany.com Reported - Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. and Illumio Inc. recently announced an expanded strategic partnership to help organizations defend against new threats posed by advanced AI models capable of autonomously executing full-scale attacks at machine speed.

Paul Barbosa, Vice President of Cloud and Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) at Check Point, stated that security teams now need to defend faster, more complex environments against attackers who leverage AI to complete in minutes what previously took weeks. The partnership aims to provide layered defense: Check Point blocks threats at the perimeter, while Illumio ensures that even if threats enter, they cannot spread freely, together closing the gap attackers seek to exploit.

Advanced AI models are transforming the nature of cyberattacks. Attackers can compress the entire attack lifecycle—discovery, exploitation, and lateral movement—into a single automated sequence requiring minimal human intervention. The time window from initial access to catastrophic breach is shrinking dramatically. For resource-constrained security teams, the critical question has shifted to how to promptly detect and stop threats already inside from spreading.

The expanded partnership aims to address both issues simultaneously. Check Point provides threat defense and zero-trust security for perimeters, data centers, and networks, with real-time threat defense against unknown attacks. Illumio handles internal network issues, including workload communication visibility, exposure of attack paths, and protection of critical assets and containment of breaches through micro-segmentation controls. Together, the two companies offer protection and recovery capabilities as a unified function, with customers able to purchase Illumio directly through Check Point to simplify vendor consolidation and accelerate deployment.

Building on the 2025 integration with Illumio Insights—which helps security teams connect Check Point threat intelligence with workload visibility to detect lateral movement risks—the expanded partnership adds deep integration with Illumio Segmentation. Security teams can align Check Point firewall policies with Illumio's workload models in hybrid and multi-cloud environments, reducing unnecessary connections and making it harder for attackers to move laterally once inside.

Andrew Rubin, CEO and Founder of Illumio, stated that AI is compressing the time between intrusion and impact, fundamentally changing the calculus for defenders. Cybersecurity now has two tasks: stop what can be stopped, and for everything else, quickly detect and stop the spread. The partnership aims to help organizations change this calculus, containing attacks before they become disasters.

This collaboration builds a more complete security architecture for the AI era. Check Point's prevention-first execution blocks threats at critical network perimeters. Illumio Insights reveals suspicious movements and attack paths in hybrid environments. Illumio Segmentation, more tightly integrated with Check Point firewall policies, limits the spread of threats once inside. For security teams managing more systems, connections, and changes, this combination means faster detection, smarter decisions, and the ability to contain incidents before they become disasters.

Pete Finalle, Research Manager at IDC, stated that IDC predicts micro-segmentation will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 23.5%, with 96% of buyers experiencing significant improvements in security posture, cyber resilience, and ransomware preparedness. IDC research shows that 98.3% of micro-segmentation buyers prefer their solutions to be tightly integrated with SASE, firewalls, or other zero-trust technologies. This partnership directly addresses these concerns, integrating micro-segmentation with the broader cybersecurity stack into a unified platform, simplifying the process of limiting lateral movement and implementing zero trust at scale.

The expanded integration is now available to joint customers of Check Point and Illumio. More details, including technical integration guides, are available in white papers from Check Point and Illumio.

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