The View from Davos with Check Point CEO Nadav Zafrir

AI is moving fast. Security has to move first.

From Davos, Daniel Newman sits down with Nadav Zafrir, CEO of Check Point Software, to examine why cybersecurity has become a foundational requirement for AI transformation, not a downstream consideration.

As geopolitical tension, rapid AI adoption, and enterprise transformation collide, the conversation centers on a simple reality: AI is already operating in the physical world. Autonomous vehicles, healthcare systems, financial infrastructure, and agent-driven workflows are operating live. That shift dramatically expands the attack surface, compresses response windows, and raises the cost of failure.

Zafrir outlines why securing AI requires rethinking security architecture from the ground up. Prevention-first strategies, ecosystem collaboration, and AI-powered defense are no longer optional. As enterprises race to remain relevant, security becomes the gating factor between ambition and safe, scalable execution.

‍

‍Key Takeaways Include:

🔷 AI security is not a future problem: Agents are already driving cars, handling medical workflows, and automating operations, which makes AI security an immediate, real-world requirement.

🔷 Attackers move faster than defenders by default: Enterprises must re-evaluate their existing security posture, account for new AI-driven attack surfaces, and assume asymmetry in threat evolution.

🔷 Cybersecurity must be built into AI by design: Securing AI requires prevention-first architectures, not reactive detection layered on after deployment.

🔷 AI must defend AI: Enterprises increasingly need to use AI to secure their own systems, accelerating response and reducing noise at scale.

🔷 Ecosystems matter more than standalone tools: No single vendor or platform can solve AI security alone. Collaboration across customers, partners, and vendors is essential.

‍

Learn more about how Check Point is securing AI at scale at Check Point Software.
‍

Subscribe to our Youtube Channel so you never miss an episode.

Listen to the audio here:

‍Disclaimer: Six Five Media’s The View from Davos is for information and entertainment purposes only. Over the course of this webcast, we may talk about companies that are publicly traded, and we may even reference that fact and their equity share price, but please do not take anything that we say as a recommendation about what you should do with your investment dollars. We are not investment advisors, and we ask that you do not treat us as such.

‍

Daniel Newman :
Hey everyone, the Six Five is on the road here with a view from Davos. We are here in the middle of all the action right now. A lot is going on here. It is a big day. There's gonna be some very big conversations. But we're talking AI technology security and I've got the CEO of Checkpoint here, Nadav Zaver. Nadav, welcome to the Six Five. Great to have a chance to chat for a few minutes with you. Oh yeah, thanks for having me. So look, first and foremost, You can see, I don't know, you've probably come here year in and year out. One of the busiest Davos that I've seen in a long time. How's the event going for you so far?

Nadav Zafrir: 

You know, it's a crazy time, right, when you sort of integrate the geopolitical situation we're all in. and you couple that with the incredible technology transformation that's happening, you bring these two together, and security, cyber security, is going to be front and center. And so, this is an awesome place to be.

Daniel Newman : 

Yeah, and I know a lot of people have been kind of, you know, not so many people here, but around the world or in the media over the last several months have said, oh, AI's a bubble, AI's not, like, you come here and you have to say, whether they're government, they're enterprises and technologies, whether they're non-profit organizations, all of them are here and they are committed in a very significant way to the continued investment, the continued investment in infrastructure, the continued investment in AI. Are you hearing and seeing the same things in your meetings?

Nadav Zafrir: 

It's top of mind for every leader in the world right now, as it should be. I mean, if you think about it, This transformation is like nothing we've ever seen before. It's more foundational. happening much faster than anything we've seen before. And so the fact that this is an amazing change, the fact that it's happening at an unprecedented pace, is creating this as a top of mind issue for everyone. Because every CEO that I meet, every board member, every CFO, every CIO, is thinking about relevance. Are we going to be relevant in a couple of years? And in order to remain relevant, they have to transform. They're transforming, they know that they're introducing new challenges That's where we come in and our mission from now on is the secure AI transformation.

Daniel Newman : 

About compute, we hear about network, we hear about capacity, model development, energy. One of the things that I think needs to be more top of mind, and I think every enterprise is thinking about it behind the scenes, but I think it needs to be more front of the scenes, is security. How does the world keep up as we unlock, we create new data, synthetic data, real data, we unlock enterprise data, and these things aren't just for gimmicks. They're not just for creating cat videos. This is going to be for the cars that drive on our roads. for the healthcare that we receive and provide, for financial transactions around the world. So what is needed to really secure the future of AI?

Nadav Zafrir: 

Well, it's not the future, it's here. Agents are already driving cars, agents are already giving medical care, agents are replacing call centers. I think that you need to look at it at three different lens. Lens number one is from the attacker's perspective. So attackers are probably a little bit faster than defenders always. And it's an asymmetric battle. And so the first thing you need to do is revalidate everything that you already have in your system. All right, that's number one. Number two, you need to think about your transformation. What are you going to deploy and what new attack vectors and attack surface are you now creating within your organization? And number three, how do you use AI to transform your own security? You've got to look at it from those three perspectives. And I think the biggest challenge right now is the interconnectivity between humans and agents that has not been planned. And so to your question, what should we be thinking about? We should be thinking about cyber by design for this transformation through these three lens.

Daniel Newman : 

All right, so we basically have the fastest proliferation of a new technology in history. We are, to your point, deploying all these workloads in real time. I'm in Austin, Texas. We have Waymo's driving around my city. But we do have a challenge. What is the checkpoint philosophy? What's the ethos of the company? I heard what you're kind of saying, you're the AI. But what does that mean? What are you going to be able to do? And what are you telling enterprises right now that they need to be doing immediately to protect their data estates?

Nadav Zafrir: 

Number one, assess your current estate. Number two, make sure that everything new you're introducing, you have the right capabilities to secure something which you haven't even been thinking about. And number three, harness AI for your own security. And our ethos is very, very simple. You start with the foundation. The foundation, which is going to have a renaissance, is proactive prevention first. That's where we shine. You're not going to be able to deal with all the noise in your network. You're going to have to block the utmost stuff that you can block, and we do it at 99%. Number two, you need to think about an ecosystem play. I don't think that anybody's going to figure this out by themselves. And so it needs to be a virtuous cycle. I look at our customers, where are they going? What's that introducing? What are the attackers doing? What do we deploy? And again, and again, and again, and at unprecedented pace, because otherwise we're going to get out learned by the attackers.

Daniel Newman : 

So those are the foundations of what we're doing. Nadav, I want to thank you so much for taking a little time here in Davos to talk to me about the future of security. AI is transforming this industry at an incredible pace, and I think everybody out there needs to be thinking more about cybersecurity. We can build all the compute, we can build the coolest models on the planet, but when enterprises want to start to really unlock productivity, gain efficiency, and start to deliver ROI, you need to do it in a way that is truly secure.

Nadav Zafrir: 

Yeah, and we need to create this idea of guardian ages and that's the foundational change that we're going into and it's going to be fascinating so thank you. It's so close to a guardian angel. Exactly.

Daniel Newman : 

That's what Checkpoint can be. Thank you so much to Davos. Thank you. And thank you everybody for being part of this Six Five. We are on the road here with a View from Davos. Subscribe, check out all the other content that we did here on the road and of course all of the content on the Six Five. We'll see you all later.

‍