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CheckPoint Software > Case Studies > Securing Virtualized Environment: A Case Study of The Chinese University of Hong Kong
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Securing Virtualized Environment: A Case Study of The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Technology Category
  • Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Virtual Private Cloud
  • Wearables - Virtual Reality Glasses, Headsets & Controllers
Applicable Industries
  • Education
  • National Security & Defense
Applicable Functions
  • Maintenance
  • Quality Assurance
Use Cases
  • Inventory Management
  • Tamper Detection
The Challenge
The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), a comprehensive research-led university, faced a significant challenge in handling massive loads of data traffic across its campus network. With its data center growing exponentially, the university turned to virtualization to optimize its server and network resources, reduce costs, and save data center real estate. However, data center virtualization came with its own set of challenges, particularly concerning security. Legacy tools often did not provide the control and visibility needed to extend protection within virtual environments. The university needed a solution that could deliver security in a dynamic environment, inspect all traffic between various virtual machines, immediately and automatically apply protection when new virtual machines were created, and provide central administration to reduce management complexities.
About The Customer
Established in 1963, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) is a comprehensive research-led university delivering high-quality education on both undergraduate and postgraduate levels and serving the community with cutting-edge research. With nine colleges and eight faculties, CUHK currently has more than 20,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students and more than 6,000 teaching and administrative staff. CUHK is well known as a technology pioneer within Hong Kong’s academic sector.
The Solution
To address these challenges, CUHK leveraged the Check Point Security Gateway Virtual Edition (VE) in hypervisor mode. This solution provided comprehensive security for its virtualized environment, maximizing security during migration and creation of VMs or maintenance activities. It also provided immediate protection to enforce policies within its dynamic virtual environment. The solution inspected inter-VM traffic at the hypervisor level, protecting the university’s virtual environment from both external and internal threats. The Check Point Security Gateway VE was managed from the same security management console as other Check Point products, enabling CUHK to leverage its existing Check Point Management solution to provide unified control. This ensured consistency in the creation, distribution, and management of security policies across the entire IT environment, both virtualized and physical, further simplifying management, reducing costs, and streamlining processes.
Operational Impact
  • The implementation of Check Point Security Gateway Virtual Edition (VE) provided CUHK with a comprehensive, easy-to-manage, and scalable solution. It offered complete security for its dynamic virtualized environments, including Firewall, IPS, VPN, Anti-virus, Anti-spam, URL Filtering, and Web security. The solution also simplified management by providing a single interface for both physical and virtualized environments, and tailored reporting to accelerate auditing and achieve compliance. Furthermore, the solution was extensible, allowing CUHK to protect against emerging threats with optional Software Blades and include IPS and Web security at the hypervisor level. This ensured that CUHK could keep pace with its virtualization strategy and continue to deliver high-quality education and research.
Quantitative Benefit
  • Complete virtual machine security for dynamic virtualized environments
  • Virtual Machine (VM) deployment requires no network changes
  • New VMs are protected with automatic security policy enforcement

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