Checkpoint - Use a consultant? Training? From a book?

[davidmulcair]

Hi everyone.

My company is looking at a checkpoint firewall and VPN solution. We're currently using two Linksys BEFVP41's to network two of our offices. They are working great, but we need a performance and security/reliability boost. What is the best way to go about this?

- Consultant: Expensive, have to rely on third party.
- Training: We have in house IT that have the capability to learn checkpoint. Is this a good route? Expensive?
- From a book: The cheap and dirty way... advisable?

Finally, for those of you using checkpoint, what kind of hardware should I go with? Our head office only has approx 50 users, so i was figuring on an Safe@Office solution.

Any advice would be appretiated.

David.

 

[pansophic]

Consultants are generally only expensive if you consider your IT staff's time to be free. As a consultant, I have solved many problems for clients in hours that would have taken them days to accomplish on their own. Because a good consultant will know what he is looking at and won't be looking around for answers.

Training is always great, I recommend it for everyone who gets the opportunity, but you still need experience to go with the training before you can attempt to accomplish something better than getting the system to work. Getting it to work well takes practice. And do you really want to practice with the security of your own network?

Books are the same way as training. I generally find books to be more cost effective than classes, and they are certainly faster in linear time, but reading a book is not something that you can put on your resume.

In a perfect world, you would send someone (or two) to training, and then hire a consultant who speciailizes in the Checkpoint on the platform that you intend to run it on. Then your people get training and experience. Of course it is also the most expensive way to go. But you get away from the reliance on the third party except when you actually need that expertise.


pansophic