R81 is out in Early Availability

It looks like Checkpoints R81 is comming soon. It is now available in the Public Early Availability program.

This means that if you have a Checkpoint subscription, you can now participate in EA, and download the EA release.

And there is a lot of changes, but here is a few…

  • Custom intelligence feeds can now be managed through SmartConsole. Add, delete or modify feeds fetched by the Security Gateways as well as import files in a CSV or STIX 1.x formats.
  • Out of the box policy profiles based on business and IT security needs.
  • Azure Active Directory support in Identity Awareness – Use Azure AD users and groups for authentication and authorization using Identity Awareness Access Role picker.
  • Hit count for NAT rules.
  • Cross-Domain Management Server Search lets you search for objects across multiple Domain Management Server databases.

And much more…

The Checkmates forum have the improvements listed.

https://community.checkpoint.com/t5/Product-Announcements/R81-EA-Program-Production/ba-p/86945