Interview with Gil Shwed: The Challenges, Opportunities, and Future of Cybersecurity

During Cybertech Europe 2024, currently taking place in Rome, Amir Rapaport, the founder of Cybertech, met with Gil Shwed, CEO and co-founder of Check Point. They discussed the future of cybersecurity, the growing threats, and the opportunities facing cybersecurity companies in an era of artificial intelligence, cyber wars, and cloud transition.

The Big Challenge in 2025 – Generation 5 Cyberattacks
Shwed points out that one of the central challenges for 2025 is the tremendous growth in cyberattacks, both in quantity and sophistication. “I think that AI will inevitably become a force multiplier for both the attackers and defenders, but also mega-ransomware supply-chain attacks, and what we call the 5th generation of cyberattacks, which use AI, are very hard to detect, that act with multi-vector attacks,” he says. “A few years ago, these attacks were the future, but today they’re the present. They are becoming bigger and bigger threats to everyone’s environment.”

Cybersecurity in the Era of Wars
Shwed explains that the use of cyber warfare tends to increase between wars and not necessarily during actual combat, noting that governments and militaries rely more and more on cyber capabilities. At the same time, he is concerned about the implications of dangerous tools leaking into the dark web, adding that “unfortunately, one of the challenges is that some of these tools are getting to the hands of the everyday hackers, who can use more sophisticated tools each year.” 

Cloud Transition – Opportunity or Threat?
Shwed explains that the cloud is an important trend for the future but also a potential threat. “The fact that we are putting so many assets in one central location on the internet, which is not always adequately protected, poses a challenge for cyber, for moving forward. He emphasizes the need to ensure additional layers of protection to address the dangers inherent in the transition to cloud services.

AI on the Internet and Cloud
Shwed believes that artificial intelligence will change the rules of the game in many areas but also warns of the dangers it brings. “In the past, you had to be very sophisticated to become an attacker, now everyone can generate attacks,” he says, adding that the use of AI in phishing attacks, for example, has become so sophisticated, that these attacks are nearly undetectable.

New Leadership at Check Point – Nadav Tsafrir Takes the Helm
This year, after more than 30 years of operation, Shwed announced the appointment of Nadav Tsafrir as the new CEO of Check Point. “I think it’s a good opportunity to move forward, to do more. I’m staying at Check Point and intend to stay very involved” Shwed says. He notes that Tsafrir “is an amazing leader, a super expert in cyber” who has established new companies in the field and created a network of professionals worldwide. Tsafrir's central mission, according to Shwed is to continue implementing Check Point's platform vision, where security technologies operate together on a unified platform.

Looking to the Future – Integrating Platforms and Security Services
Shwed sees Check Point's business growth as critically important in the coming years, with the central vision being to lead the security industry through the Infinity Portal platform. He notes that Check Point will continue its acquisition trend, similar to those made this year, and invest in developing new security services to strengthen its position in the cybersecurity world.

In Summary – 30+ Years of Cybersecurity and Future Challenges
Shwed concludes that thirty years in the cybersecurity field have been beyond what he could have imagined. “When I founded Check Point 31 years ago, I believed that the internet would change the world and that security was critical. And I think that vision was spot-on, but was probably 100 or 1000 times bigger than my imagination.”

Schwed ends the interview on an optimistic note, confident that cybersecurity will continue to be critical for the future of the internet, artificial intelligence, and the cloud in the coming decades.