Overview of Cloud Management Extension (CME)

CME is a tool that runs on Check Point's Security Management Server and Multi-Domain Security Management Server. CME allows cloud-native integration between Check Point CloudGuard Network solutions and Cloud platforms.

As a Service, it continuously monitors CloudGuard Network solutions deployed in different cloud vendors and synchronizes them with the Security Management Server.

Supported Solutions and Features

  • CloudGuard Network for Azure VMSS

  • CloudGuard Network for AWS ASG

  • CloudGuard Network for GCP MIG

  • Automatic Hotfix Deployment for autoscaling solutions

  • CloudGuard Network for AWS Transit VPC

  • CloudGuard Network for AWS Transit Gateway

  • CloudGuard Network for NSX-T. For more information, see the CloudGuard Network for NSX-T Security Gateway Deployment Guide

Note - CME supports Check Point Management Server versions R80.20 and higher.

CME configuration file

The CME configuration file has three fields which are detailed in the CME Structure and Configurations section:

  1. Controllers - Cloud accounts for communication with a specific cloud provider. These include the parameters necessary to connect with your cloud application.

  2. Management - Parameters of the Check Point Management Server.

  3. Templates - The individual scale sets configured in the account.

Scale-In and Scale-Out Events

Scale sets automatically increase the number of VM instances as application demand increases (Scale-Out) and reduce the number of VM instances as demand decreases (Scale-In).

CME continually scans, and on each iteration, the load dictates if a scale-out or a scale-in event occurs, or if CME detects a demand that is not too high or too low for the current size of the set, there is no change.

Scale-In

A scale-in event occurs as a result of a decrease in the current load. When a scale-in event triggers, CME designates one or more gateways as candidates for termination. The External Load Balancer stops forwarding new connections to these gateways, and Autoscale ends them. CME detects that these CloudGuard Network Security Gateways are stopped and automatically deletes these gateways from the Check Point Security Management Server's database.

Scale-Out

A scale-out event occurs if the current load increases. When a scale-out event is triggered:

  • The cloud provider auto-scale launches one or more new instances of the Check Point CloudGuard Network Security Gateways.

  • The new instances of CloudGuard Network Security Gateways automatically run the Check Point First Time Configuration Wizard and then reboot.

During the scale-out, CME detects that new CloudGuard Network Security Gateway instances were launched. CME waits until the CloudGuard Network Security Gateways complete to deploy and then automatically:

  • Initializes a Secure Internal Communication (SIC) channel with these CloudGuard Network Security Gateways.

  • Install a restrictive access policy that has only a drop-all cleanup rule on these CloudGuard Network Security Gateways. For more information see Implied Rules and Restrictive Policy.

  • Do more configurations if needed, for example, blade configuration, run user custom scripts, create automatic Access/NAT rules, and more.

  • Installs a Security Policy on these CloudGuard Network Security Gateways.

After the Security Policy installation, these CloudGuard Network Security Gateways start to reply to health probes. The Load Balancer then starts to forward new connections to them. The newly created CloudGuard Network Security Gateways report their status and send logs to CME.