SecureClient NG-AI R56 HFA 2 for Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) is now officially available through the Support Portal. I tested the EA versions (Build 8 and 15) and had good results.
It’s sad that it took so long for Check Point to come up with a VPN client for 10.6 and also SNX support for Snow Leopard is not here at the moment.
Hope they’ll fix that soon.
Tobias Lachmann
Check Point now has an open EA for the Discovery VPN client, which is the successor of the well-known SecureClient. Based on the documentation, it’s a mixture of Endpoint Connect when it comes to the VPN client engine and Endpoint Security Secure Access when it comes to the build-in personal firewall. The good part is, that the personal firewall rules can be managed the old-fashioned way through the SmartDashboard, like today with SecureClient. So no change her and the ability to use all the existing object in your database.
To access this EA, log into your UserCenter account, go to Products -> Early Availability and choose to register for Discover VPN client.
In the moment the Discovery VPN client is only available for NGX R65 HFA60, a release for R70/R71 will follow shortly. Supported gateway platforms are SecurePlatform, Windows and IPSO 4.2.
The client has support for Windows XP 32 bit with SP2 or SP3, Windows Vista 32 and 64 bit with SP1 and Windows 7 32 and 64 bit, so most of the operating system platforms found in companies are covered.
The following features are not supported at the moment:
But this is OK as it is an EA on the GA version will surely have all those features.
In addition, Discovery VPN client has features that Endpoint Connect is offering, like better Location Awareness, Automatic Site Detection, better Roaming etc.
A hotfix has to be installed on the gateway to enable Discovery support, no changes at the SmartCenter are needed. The configuration has no Discovery specific details, just a normal SecureClient configuration. If you have an exisiting deployment, nothing has to be changed.
I will test this client in the next weeks. If you have done so, please feel free to send comments to blog@lachmann.org and share your experience.
Personally I miss support for Mac OS 10.4, 10.5 and 10.6 very much. Especially media related companies such as advertisement agencies, print and TV producers use Mac OS as operating system, so this is a significant number of users.
Sadly, Check Point hasn’t these operating systems in the same focus as the Windows OS. This leads to the point where the customers change from SecureClient to IPSecuritas, a freeware VPN client. Using this client means more work for the client administrators, as settings can’t be distributed in the way it is done with SecureClient for Mac OS.
Tobias Lachmann