Israeli Gil Shwed, Co-founder and CEO of Checkpoint, attended Cybertech NYC last week to discuss new challenges in the post-COVID era

“The pandemic has been a real transformation in terms of cyber, the level of challenges we have been seeing have gone way up. For me personally, it’s been a very interesting time, learning how much we can adapt and how agile we can be,” said Gil Shwed, Co-founder and CEO of Checkpoint, at a special fireside chat with Cybertech founder Amir Rapaport at Cybertech NYC, held last week.

Shwed discussed today’s main cyber challenges, 5th generation cyberattacks which are multi-vector and highly sophisticated. “3-4 years ago, such attacks were the future of attacks, now they are already mainstream,” he said, and warning that companies and organizations are severely underprepared.

“The result of this is that ransomware attacks, which started with a few hundred dollars taken from individual consumers, changed into shutting down oil pipelines in the US and millions in ransom,” he said.

“We are on the verge of a cyber pandemic, that will use all vulnerable vectors and will work together to create devastation,” Shwed said, adding that the most vulnerable, under-protected devices today are IoT and mobile.