Gil Shwed was in his twenties when he wrote the firewall that made Check Point. He and two partners started the company in Ramat Gan, Israel, in 1993, the year the web began to spread. Companies were plugging their networks into the internet for the first time and had no idea who was knocking. Check Point's FireWall-1 checked every connection against rules the company set. By its 1996 IPO, Check Point held about 40 percent of the world firewall market, by IDC's count.

Three Founders in Ramat Gan

Shwed, Marius Nacht, and Shlomo Kramer founded Check Point in 1993. Their product, FireWall-1, used a method Shwed patented called stateful inspection. It tracked each connection as it passed through the firewall, which made it both safer and faster than older filters. Check Point sold mostly through partners and resellers, including Sun Microsystems. That let a small Israeli team reach big customers around the world quickly.

Thirty Years on Nasdaq

Check Point went public on Nasdaq on June 28, 1996, at $14 a share, with Goldman Sachs leading the deal. It became one of the largest security companies in the world and stayed independent. Its firewall line grew into network, cloud, and email security products. Gil Shwed ran the company as CEO for three decades before handing the job to Nadav Zafrir in 2024. Check Point still trades on Nasdaq as CHKP.

Cover: Turkish Guard House, Alexandre Gabriel Decamps. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a guard house (a checkpoint).