Introduction

This document provides practical hardening recommendations for Check Point Security Gateways and Management Servers running supported Gaia OS releases. The recommendations apply to these versions:

• R82.10

• R82

• R81.20

Recent industry developments, including Anthropic's Mythos and related initiatives, reflect a fundamental shift in the cyber threat landscape. Advanced AI capabilities are expected to significantly accelerate the pace, scale, and automation of attacks, reducing the time and effort required to identify, adapt, and operationalize attack techniques. As a result, attackers are increasingly expected to focus on management planes, control planes, privileged access paths, trust relationships, and operational misconfigurations for assets that provide disproportionate leverage when abused.

This shift does not depend on weaknesses in specific products. Rather, it highlights a broader reality: highly trusted platforms and administrative systems must be continuously hardened to remain resilient as attack speed and sophistication increase.

Check Point is providing this guidance to help customers proactively strengthen their environments, reduce exposed attack surface, and limit the potential impact of control plane or identity-based abuse. These recommendations are part of a defense in depth approach designed to improve preparedness as AI accelerated attack techniques become more prevalent across the industry.

Each recommendation in this document includes:

• What to do

• Why it is recommended

• Default vs. recommended behavior

• An example where appropriate

• A direct reference to official Check Point documentation or SecureKnowledge for implementation