SEP2 continues to grow and strengthen our relationship with Check Point.

SEP2 have been a partner of Check Point since we began in 2016, and we were awarded Check Point Certified Support Partner (CCSP) in that same year. We are a Specialist Partner across all areas of the Check Point ecosystem including Harmony, CloudGuard, Maestro, Quantum and Professional Services. We significantly exceed the minimum requirement across all of the technical certifications within these areas, and having 5 Check Point Certified Security Master Elite’s in our team, we are one of the most technically skilled and certified partners available to help in supporting our customer’s Check Point environments.

Over the last 18 months, SEP2 have worked with key individuals within the Check Point Customer and Partner Advocacy teams, some examples of the benefits that have been experienced through this collaboration include:

• Pro-Active use of significant amounts of loan Check Point hardware to facilitate major upgrade projects.
• Engaging and bringing one of the lead product developers onsite to provide superior levels of support during a critical software update of a complex deployment for a customer with “critical to life” Cyber Security requirements.
• Escalation of priority TAC cases to include direct involvement with software developers who are actually writing parts of the Check Point Software code to understand and troubleshoot an issue which resulted in software patches to be issued.

John Johnson – Customer Advocacy Team Lead – EMEA shares his thoughts on what the role & goal of the team is:

“The Check Point Customer and Partner Advocacy teams are focused on providing access to headquarter-level resources that are focused on stabilization and process improvement.

Customer and Partner Advocacy Managers are senior members of Check Point’s technical organizations, who have direct access to executive management as well as all company technical and business functions.

The main goal of the Advocacy manager is to become trusted single point of contact for all post sales activities, assisting pre-sales teams where required.

Advocacy mangers work in a pro-active manner to understand customer and partner needs, creating a joint set of mutual goals all parties work in tandem to successfully deliver.

Goals of the Advocacy Manager:

• Being proactive, making it Easy, Fast & Simple to work with Check Point
• Build and maintain strong relationships directly with the partner or customer at the headquarter level
• Coordinate internal Check Point teams and organizations to support partner or customer projects and business needs
• Identify common needs among strategic partners / customers, and proactively leverage them across the Customer Advocacy community
• Maintain a continuous focus on the highest levels of partner and customer satisfaction
• Proactively engage with the customer and work closely with the assigned Check Point account team to coordinate efforts as well as resources to support challenges and projects
• Build a yearly plan together with the customer to better understand current and future security needs as well as technical and operational challenges
• Plan and review major upgrades, refresh projects and new deployments
• Present new technologies and solutions via on-site and remote meetings
• Monitor ongoing support calls (SR’s) as soon as they are opened and work closely and in full coordination with technical resources to drive quick resolution
• Resolve urgent issues with TAC, R&D, QA and other Check Point technical organizations.”

Paul Starr, CEO of SEP2 shares his thoughts on the partnership with Check Point and how SEP2 are measuring our technical success:

“Check Point is a core vendor to SEP2, and we take a significant amount of pride in demonstrating to our customers how skilled we are within all aspects of the Check Point technology. We measure and always try to actively increase our “self-resolve rate” of Check Point support tickets. In Q3 2022, out of 721 tickets related to Check Point technology raised by our customers, we only needed to escalate 4.71% to Check Point TAC. This was improved in Q4 2022, where out of 831 tickets, we only needed Check Point’s involvement for 4.33%.

This “self-resolve” rate is a key metric and benefit to our customers, as the more tickets that SEP2 resolve without having to escalate to Check Point means that the ticket is likely to be resolved quicker. This means ultimately that our customer’s issues are solved faster by our UK based 24×7 eyes-on team consisting of only SEP2 employees, with no subcontractors or third parties involved.”