Check Point launches AI Network Firewall to secure prompts, agents, and AI enterprise activities

The Network Has Become the Control Plane for AI Security

Network firewalls are the workhorses of modern cybersecurity. They are trusted to protect the network, blocking malicious traffic and preventing intrusions and breaches. And for decades, network security teams have built controls around a relatively stable model: users connect to applications, applications exchange data, and security tools inspect packets, protocols, and destinations. Firewalls became exceptionally good at understanding where traffic was going and whether it should be allowed. But just as AI is reshaping every aspect of the business world, it's also had a monumental impact on how security teams view network traffic and the firewall. AI is driving new network dynamics that traditional security policies were never designed to govern. Employees, applications, and agents send prompts, call models, connect to services, and trigger actions across the environment, all activity most firewalls can't see, let alone understand. AI agents interact with external services, retrieve information, execute actions, and increasingly communicate with other agents autonomously. Reinventing the Firewall for the AI Era The network is the central hub for AI use and the one control point where it can be secured in real time. And this new reality calls for a new kind of network security rooted in AI and designed to protect your network from today's ever dynamic threat landscape. We're introducing the industry's first AI Network Firewall to deliver comprehensive AI security at the network level that protects employee AI use, AI applications, and AI agents directly from the firewall organizations already run. The AI Network Firewall is fully integrated into Check Point's AI Defense Plane, turning the existing firewall into an Intent-aware enforcement layer for detecting, inspecting, and controlling AI activity across the enterprise including every network, cloud, branch, and AI data center. Addressing the Visibility Gap in the AI Enterprise The challenge facing organizations today is twofold: not only is AI being adopted rapidly, it has also fundamentally changed the nature of network activity. Traditional security controls were designed to inspect connections, applications, and traffic flows. They can identify where traffic is going and whether a connection should be permitted, but they were never built to understand the context and intent behind AI interactions. This visibility gap is a growing problem. Employees are sending prompts to generative AI platforms, applications are making model calls behind the scenes, and autonomous agents are increasingly communicating with other systems and services without human involvement. Much of this activity traverses the enterprise network, yet conventional firewalls cannot inspect a prompt, determine whether sensitive information is being exposed, govern agent-to-agent interactions, or identify malicious AI-driven activity. Our answer to this challenge is an evolution of the firewall itself. To secure the AI enterprise, security controls must move beyond traffic inspection and become intent-aware. By understanding prompts, model interactions, file uploads, API calls, and agent behavior in real time, an AI Network Firewall provides the visibility and control organizations need to safely adopt AI at scale. Rather than treating AI as an isolated technology stack, it embeds governance directly into the network control point that already sits in the path of enterprise activity. This allows security teams to prevent prompt-injection attacks, stop data exfiltration, detect API abuse, govern MCP servers, and maintain centralized oversight of AI usage across employees, applications, and autonomous agents. Security That Operates at AI Speed The speed at which AI is being adopted is creating a second challenge: operational complexity. Security teams are straining to keep pace with a constant stream of new AI applications, changing business requirements, and emerging threats. Traditional security operations often depend on translating business requests into technical policies, manually coordinating changes across multiple systems, and maintaining consistency across disparate environments. At AI speed, that approach becomes increasingly unsustainable. This is where intelligence must extend beyond enforcement into operations. Modern AI security requires platforms that can simplify policy creation, automate analysis and remediation, and integrate directly with the business context organizations have already established. Human-language policy management, automated event analysis, and agentic orchestration enable security teams to respond faster while reducing the risk of human error. Rather than duplicating policy across multiple tools, organizations can leverage existing labels, tags, identities, and asset classifications from across their technology ecosystem to enforce a single, consistent access-control model. The result is greater efficiency, fewer operational mistakes, and stronger alignment between security objectives and business priorities. Scaling Security Across the Modern Enterprise The final challenge is scale. Enterprise environments are more distributed than ever, spanning data centers, public clouds, branch offices, SD-WAN deployments, SASE architectures, and AI infrastructure itself. Security teams must protect this growing footprint while maintaining prevention-first security, minimizing downtime, and avoiding operational bottlenecks. An intent-aware AI firewall provides a foundation for consistent security across every environment. Through centralized management, unified policy enforcement, automated lifecycle operations, and continuous monitoring, organizations can extend the same level of visibility, control, and protection across their entire infrastructure. Security operations become easier to manage as environments grow, while policy remains consistent and auditable regardless of where AI workloads or users reside. Protecting What Comes Next: AI, Intelligence, and Trust The next generation of firewalls will not simply secure connections. They will understand AI interactions. Led by our new AI Network Firewall, this security layer will identify prompts, model calls, agent requests, and AI-driven workflows, apply policy dynamically based on business context and security intent, and bring governance directly into the infrastructure that organizations already depend on to protect their networks. Ultimately, the value is not just stronger security. It is empowering organizations to embrace AI confidently and completely, without unnecessary risk. Employees can innovate, developers can build AI-powered applications, and agents can automate business processes, all under governance models that provide visibility, accountability, and protection. In an era where AI is transforming how work gets done, the firewall must transform with it. The network is becoming more than a transport layer. It is becoming the control plane for AI security. And the organizations that recognize this shift first will be best positioned to embrace AI safely, securely, and at scale.

Check Point Revolutionizes the Firewall Market: New AI Network Firewall Closes the Network's AI Blind Spot -- Everywhere

With the new AI Network Firewall, Check Point is the first to deliver AI security from the physical firewall organizations already run -- extending the AI Defense Plane across their network providing security teams visibility and control over AI use by employees, applications, and agents, with no new infrastructure Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. today announced the Check Point AI Network Firewall, delivered as part of Check Point firewall software release R82.20. AI has introduced a new class of network traffic -- prompts, autonomous agent actions, and sensitive business context -- that traditional firewalls were never designed to see or secure. The AI Network Firewall closes that gap from the Check Point firewall organizations already run, delivered through Check Point's AI Defense Plane with no new infrastructure and no rearchitecting. "AI is transforming the enterprise network, and with the AI Network Firewall, we are transforming the firewall to secure it," said Nataly Kremer, Chief Product Officer at Check Point. "The network is where every prompt, model call, and agent interaction already converges, yet traditional firewalls were never built to see or govern that activity. By bringing AI security into the firewall organizations already run, we give security teams the visibility and control to enable AI adoption safely, in real time." The exposure is already universal. Check Point Research's AI Security Report 2026 found that between 87% and 93% of organizations experience at least one high-risk generative-AI interaction every month and the share of prompts carrying sensitive corporate, personal, or regulated data doubled in a year to one in every 25 interactions. Organizations are adopting AI faster than they can govern it, and the activity that needs governing is already moving across the network. "Organizations are challenged to deploy dedicated AI security solutions, which are additive to their existing security architecture - contributing to the sprawl of dis-jointed, siloed security tools and agents," said Pete Finalle, Research Manager, Trusted Access and Network Security at IDC. "While rare, the native integration of AI security across existing enforcement points, provides improvements to visibility, telemetry effectiveness, security posture, and management simplicity." Turning existing firewalls into immediate AI protection Unlike alternatives that require a separate virtual firewall deployed alongside existing infrastructure, Check Point delivers this protection directly from the physical or virtual firewalls customers already operate and scales across branches, data centers, cloud, and multi-cloud environments. For Check Point firewall customers, the AI Network Firewall turns existing firewall investments into immediate AI protection across three domains: * Employee AI use: Discover AI apps, agents, and tools in use -- both shadow and sanctioned -- gain visibility into how AI is being used and prompt use-cases and intents, govern access to safe and sanctioned tools, and stop sensitive data from leaving the network based on the prompt's use case. Check Point Research found organizations now run an average of ten AI applications per month, many outside any formal process * AI Tools (MCP): Discover Model Context Protocol (MCP) communication, gain full visibility into servers and used tools, and enforce policies to control access across every interaction. Check Point Research found security weaknesses in 40% of 10,000 MCP servers reviewed * AI Application and LLM: Prevent prompt injection and adversarial inputs, blocking malicious prompts before they reach the LLM. This happens inline, with no application changes required. Check Point Research identified 15,300 indirect-injection payloads planted in public web pages, roughly 70% of them hidden in parts of the page no human ever sees Part of the AI Defense Plane: one architecture across the enterprise The AI Network Firewall becomes part of Check Point's AI Defense Plane, a unified control plane for discovering, governing, and protecting AI across the network, endpoints, cloud, applications, and APIs. Together, the AI Defense Plane delivers: * Discovery, governance, and protection for AI across web, desktop, coding assistants, and AI agents * Local AI agent discovery and control * SaaS AI agent discovery and control * Runtime protection and governance for AI applications * Risk detection and guardrails to protect homegrown and deployed AI Additional enforcement points across the AI Defense Plane span standalone API for self-managed applications, endpoint for employees, containerized firewall for AI data centers, and WAF - giving organizations consistent AI security across public and private clouds, branch offices, remote users, and data centers. Unified, agentic management across a hybrid, multi-vendor environment Following the recent announcement of its agentic network security orchestration platform, Check Point is also extending central policy management to Check Point SASE and SD-WAN, with dynamic, always-accurate zero-trust policy enforcement across IT, OT, and micro-segmentation tools including Illumio and others: * One console manages on-premises firewalls, cloud firewalls, AWS native firewalls, SD-WAN, and SASE with consistent policy and a unified audit trail across every environment * SD-WAN connectivity and security policy are managed together, ending the operational split that forces teams to juggle separate tools * Open-platform integrations keep firewall rules current as the environment changes, without manual reconciliation "Policy alone will not solve shadow AI. Employees will continue using AI tools to move faster, often before security teams know those tools are present," said Chris Konrad, Vice President, Global Cyber at WWT. "Organizations need to understand which AI applications, agents, and MCP servers are interacting with their environment, and they must have the means to intercept or block unauthorized traffic. Integrating both AI visibility and active enforcement into the enterprise firewall is a practical approach because it builds on infrastructure organizations already operate and trust. That gives teams a control point to govern usage and reduce risk without slowing innovation."

Check Point launches AI Network Firewall in software update By Investing.com

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. - Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ:CHKP) announced today the release of its AI Network Firewall as part of firewall software version R82.20, according to a press release statement. The product addresses AI-related network traffic including prompts, autonomous agent actions, and business data that traditional firewalls were not designed to monitor. The firewall operates through Check Point's existing physical or virtual firewall infrastructure without requiring additional hardware or network redesign. The AI Network Firewall provides three main functions: monitoring employee AI application usage, discovering Model Context Protocol communication and enforcing access policies, and blocking malicious prompts before they reach large language models. Check Point Research's AI Security Report 2026 found that between 87% and 93% of organizations experience at least one high-risk generative AI interaction monthly. The report also indicated that prompts containing sensitive corporate, personal, or regulated data doubled in one year to one in every 25 interactions. Organizations now run an average of ten AI applications per month. "AI is transforming the enterprise network, and with the AI Network Firewall, we are transforming the firewall to secure it," said Nataly Kremer, Chief Product Officer at Check Point. The firewall functions as part of Check Point's AI Defense Plane, which provides AI security across networks, endpoints, cloud, applications, and APIs. The system scales across branches, data centers, cloud, and multi-cloud environments. Check Point also announced it is extending central policy management to Check Point SASE and SD-WAN, allowing management of on-premises firewalls, cloud firewalls, AWS native firewalls, SD-WAN, and SASE from one console. The AI Network Firewall is available now. This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.

Check Point Software Technologies Announces Check Point AI Network Firewall As Part Of Firewall Software Release R82.20

Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. announced the Check Point AI Network Firewall, delivered as part of Check Point firewall software release R82.20. The AI Network Firewall closes that gap from the Check Point firewall organizations already run, delivered through Check Point's AI Defense Plane with no new infrastructure and no rearchitecting. The network is where every prompt, model call, and agent interaction already converges, yet traditional firewalls were never built to see or govern that activity. By bringing AI security into the firewall organizations already run, security teams gain visibility and control to enable AI adoption safely, in real time. Check Point Research's AI Security Report 2026 found that between 87% and 93% of organizations experience at least one high-risk generative-AI interaction every month and the share of prompts carrying sensitive corporate, personal, or regulated data doubled in a year to one in every 25 interactions. Organizations are adopting AI faster than they can govern it, and the activity that needs governing is already moving across the network. Unlike alternatives that require a separate virtual firewall deployed alongside existing infrastructure, Check Point delivers this protection directly from the physical or virtual firewalls customers already operate and scales across branches, data centers, cloud, and multi-cloud environments. For Check Point firewall customers, the AI Network Firewall turns existing firewall investments into immediate AI protection across three domains: Employee AI use: Discover AI apps, agents, and tools in use ? both shadow and sanctioned ? gain visibility into how AI is being used and prompt use-cases and intents, govern access to safe and sanctioned tools, and stop sensitive data from leaving the network based on the prompt's use case. Check Point Research found organizations now run an average of ten AI applications per month, many outside any formal process. AI Tools (MCP): Discover Model Context Protocol (MCP) communication, gain full visibility into servers and used tools, and enforce policies to control access across every interaction. Check Point Research found security weaknesses in 40% of 10,000 MCP servers reviewed. AI Application and LLM: Prevent prompt injection and adversarial inputs, blocking malicious prompts before they reach the LLM. This happens inline, with no application changes required. Check Point Research identified 15,300 indirect-injection payloads planted in public web pages, roughly 70% of them hidden in parts of the page no human ever sees. The AI Network Firewall becomes part of Check Point's AI Defense Plane, a unified control plane for discovering, governing, and protecting AI across the network, endpoints, cloud, applications, and APIs. Together, the AI Defense Plane delivers: Discovery, governance, and protection for AI across web, desktop, coding assistants, and AI agents; Local AI agent discovery and control; SaaS AI agent discovery and control; Runtime protection and governance for AI applications; Risk detection and guardrails to protect homegrown and deployed AI. Additional enforcement points across the AI Defense Plane span standalone API for self-managed applications, endpoint for employees, containerized firewall for AI data centers, and WAF - giving organizations consistent AI security across public and private clouds, branch offices, remote users, and data centers. Following the recent announcement of its agentic network security orchestration platform, Check Point is also extending central policy management to Check Point SASE and SD-WAN, with dynamic, always-accurate zero-trust policy enforcement across IT, OT, and micro-segmentation tools including Illumio and others: One console manages on-premises firewalls, cloud firewalls, AWS native firewalls, SD-WAN, and SASE with consistent policy and a unified audit trail across every environment; SD-WAN connectivity and security policy are managed together, ending the operational split that forces teams to juggle separate tools; Open-platform integrations keep firewall rules current as the environment changes, without manual reconciliation. Organizations need to understand which AI applications, agents, and MCP servers are interacting with their environment, and they must have the means to intercept or block unauthorized traffic. Integrating both AI visibility and active enforcement into the enterprise firewall is a practical approach because it builds on infrastructure organizations already operate and trust. That gives teams a control point to govern usage and reduce risk without slowing innovation. Check Point AI Network Firewall is available now.