Seeing the Firewall Clearly: Policy Insights That Actually Matter

Firewall policies can grow fast, and they almost never shrink on their own. Over time, even well-designed rulebases become cluttered with unused, overlapping, or risky rules that quietly increase operational risk. This problem has existed for as long as firewalls have been deployed. Years ago, I even had my own, "guaranteed three-step plan to optimize your rule base—click here to find out the trick no one talks about™," process. With enough time, I could restore order and document compensating controls for virtually any framework, satisfying auditors ranging from kind to ferocious.

Today, things are different. If you haven't heard of Check Point Software Technologies' Policy Insights, let me show you what real magic looks like. Policy Insights was built to solve this exact problem: transforming raw policy data into clear, prioritized, and actionable insights. In doing so, it addresses the most common challenges faced by fast-paced environments from small and mid-sized businesses to global enterprises.

The Problem Policy Insights Solves

Most organizations struggle with at least one of these realities:

• Firewall rules added for temporary needs that were never removed
• Shadowed or overlapping rules that behave differently than expected
• Overly permissive "any-any" or wide-scope rules that passed reviews years ago
• Zero visibility into which rules actually matter today

Traditional audits catch some of this but auditors today aren't simply asking whether firewall rules exist. They are focused on whether those rules are actively governed: if they are reviewed on a regular basis, whether access is limited according to least-privilege principles, whether organizations can prove which controls are actually enforced in production, and whether there is evidence of continuous monitoring rather than a once-a-year cleanup exercise.

This is where traditional firewall audits tend to fall short. They are usually point-in-time snapshots, manually assembled from rule exports, screenshots, and spreadsheets. While this may satisfy a checklist, it is often difficult to map that evidence directly to audit language such as ongoing review, continuous monitoring, or least privilege enforcement. The result is a reactive audit process that relies heavily on interpretation and manual justification.

Policy Insights closes this gap by providing ongoing, objective evidence that naturally aligns with regulatory and financial control requirements. By continuously analyzing policy usage and risk, it allows teams to demonstrate regular rule review activity, identify and remediate unused or overly broad access, and prioritize permissive rules based on measurable risk. This shifts firewall management from static configuration to active governance.

Instead of treating firewall reviews as a once-a-year compliance exercise, Policy Insights enables organizations to show auditors that policy hygiene is embedded into daily operations. For financial and regulatory audits, this changes the narrative from "we cleaned this up for the audit" to "this is how we continuously manage risk."

Core Capabilities

How Policy Insights Works

Policy Insights works by correlating three core data sources: the firewall policy rulebase itself, including objects, services, users, and actions; traffic logs that reflect real rule usage over defined time windows; and an analytics engine that evaluates each rule's effectiveness, scope, and risk. By combining configuration and behavior, Policy Insights produces a ranked set of findings that highlight what requires attention first, rather than simply listing what exists in the rulebase.

Operational Workflow

A typical workflow looks like this:

Open Policy Insights in SmartConsole

Follow the RED 1, 2, 3 to get to the location I have in the screenshot. This example is using R81.20.

The left pane presents suggestions for administrators to optimize the rulebase. It is organized into several categories and selections, such as removing unmatched rules, replacing existing objects, and deleting disabled rules. Each option includes a clear, sensible description displayed in a fly-out, helping administrators understand both the recommendation and its impact before making changes.

I'm spotlighting this one in particular because there are often rules that exist only to be used monthly, quarterly, annually, or during disaster recovery events. These rules live in the rulebase for special situations and are almost never removed, because their presence may be critical to the future human who finds themselves in an unfortunate situation. For those individuals, on behalf of Check Point, I say "You're welcome," because these special-purpose rules can be clearly notated and preserved for posterity.

With Policy Insights, administrators can quickly work through the rulebase and make targeted adjustments, such as removing unused sources, destinations, or services from existing rules—using log data to clearly justify each change. It can also suggest, and automatically create, new object groups that include only the subset of objects actually required for a rule.

For example, if a rule references a group of 22 database servers in the destination column, but only 14 have matched traffic in the last 90 days, Policy Insights can create a new group containing just those 14 objects and update the rule accordingly. The image below shows the system suggesting the removal of an unused FTP service from a rule.

Here is an example of a suggestion to replace several individual objects with a single group object:

Why Policy Insights Is Different

Policy Insights stands out because it is native to the Check Point management platform, requiring no additional collectors or agents, and because it operates continuously rather than as a once-a-year audit exercise. It is context-aware, understanding Check Point objects and policy logic instead of treating rules as flat entries, and it is action-oriented, designed to drive meaningful policy changes rather than simply generate reports. As a result, Policy Insights complements traditional compliance reviews by strengthening them with continuous, operational insight rather than attempting to replace them.

Security & Business Impact

Cleaner firewall policies deliver tangible security and business outcomes, including a reduced attack surface, faster troubleshooting, lower audit risk, and easier migrations or platform upgrades. They also improve overall rulebase performance and clarity, making policies simpler to understand and manage over time. For leadership, these improvements translate into measurable risk reduction and operational efficiency—without requiring new hardware investments or additional licenses.

Policy Insights is especially valuable in mature environments where firewall policies have evolved over long periods of time and accumulated complexity. It is well suited for organizations preparing for audits or cloud migrations, where visibility and cleanup are critical, as well as for teams adopting Zero Trust principles that require tighter control and continuous validation of access. It is also particularly effective for MSSPs that manage multiple customer rulebases and need consistent, scalable insight across diverse environments.

Final Thoughts

Policy Insights represents a  shift in firewall management—from static rule maintenance and sifting through logs for proof to a living body of policy management. Instead of asking "What rules do we have?", administrators can focus on "Which rules actually matter?" This distinction is where  security maturity begins to shine through.

Please note that it achieves all of this without leaning on buzzwords or forcing a Zero Trust narrative, which is only mentioned here at the very end. Policy Insights focuses on practical outcomes. It can even identify opportunities to split overly broad rules into more precise, logical rules that better reflect actual traffic patterns and intent, something that traditionally required careful, manual analysis.

Historically, this kind of work could take an entire day, or in the case of audit preparation against formal frameworks and large rule bases, multiple days, even with the help of third-party tools. Policy Insights now performs the same analysis directly inside the console, which remains the authoritative source of truth for the rulebase. The research is done in seconds, changes can be made just as quickly, and everything follows the built-in policy approval workflows. Every action is fully captured in highly granular audit trails.

Put simply, Policy Insights automates what experienced engineers used to do by hand AND does it faster, more consistently, and with better governance. It is features like this that explain why Check Point Central Management is so often described as the envy of all firewall management platforms.