Time

All Security Management Servers, Security Gateways, and Cluster Two or more Security Gateways that work together in a redundant configuration - High Availability, or Load Sharing. Members must synchronize their system clocks.

This is important for these reasons:

• SIC Secure Internal Communication. The Check Point proprietary mechanism with which Check Point computers that run Check Point software authenticate each other over SSL, for secure communication. This authentication is based on the certificates issued by the ICA on a Check Point Management Server. trust can fail if devices are not synchronized correctly.

• Cluster synchronization requires precise clock synchronization between members.

• SmartEvent Correlation uses time stamps that must be synchronized to approximately one a second.

• To make sure that cron jobs run at the correct time.

• To do certificate validation for applications based on the correct time.

You can use these methods to set the system date and time:

• Network Time Protocol (NTP).

• Manually, in the Gaia Portal Web interface for the Check Point Gaia operating system., or Gaia Clish The name of the default command line shell in Check Point Gaia operating system. This is a restricted shell (role-based administration controls the number of commands available in the shell)..

Network Time Protocol (NTP)

Network Time Protocol (NTP) is an Internet standard protocol used to synchronize the clocks of computers in a network to the millisecond.

NTP runs as a background client program on a client computer. It sends periodic time requests to specified servers to synchronize the client computer clock.

Best Practice - Configure more than one NTP server for redundancy.