According to Gil Shwed, Check Point's chairman and CEO, the new development - combined with the acquired technologies - will provide businesses with granular information security control over application usage.

It will also, he said, enable security administrators to prevent threats associated with the use of certain internet applications.

The plan is for Check Point to offer these information security controls to customers as a software blade that will be available for all gateways.

"As the internet and its use have evolved, Check Point has ensured businesses remain securely connected. This granular application control will enable better use of web 2.0 technologies safely and securely", he explained.

Shwed said that, with these moves, Check Point is continuing to enhance internet firewall technology.

"Adding the world's largest application classification database is a natural extension of our Software Blade architecture, demonstrating the power of our architecture and solution," he said.

Focus on virtualisation and endpoint security

Check Point's move into the granular control of applications follows on from an interview given late last week by its Canadian security engineering manager, in which he said that next year will see Check Point focus its efforts on virtualisation and endpoint information security.

In an interview with IT Business Canada, Kellman Meghu, said that, as more companies look to virtualise their IT infrastructures to save power and be more environmentally friendly, it's important that partners and end-users realise that information security policies and procedures that work well in a physical environment don't always work the same way in a virtual world.

"There are no new threats in a virtual world, but what has changed is the way in which they protect their infrastructures", he said.

"You can't replicate what you're doing [for security] in the physical world and expect that to work the same and scale in the virtual world. There are more policies and extra layers that need to be looked at in a virtual environment."