< Blocking Google Tracking | HIV/AIDS Awareness Week >
On of my readers asked me what I though of Blue Lane technology's Patch Point. Either they have come up with some revolutionary new product or they are spouting marketing speak and selling an IDS.
PatchPoint is a network appliance-based solution that emulates vendor patches inline, which enables servers behind PatchPoint to continue performing as if the appropriate vendor patch had been installed. PatchPoint instantly creates a patched state for critical servers, which means that the vendor patches can be deployed at a later, more convenient time.
Their description of how it works makes it sounds a bit like an IDS with an ActiveFix being a signature. Other than that the site is scant on technical details. If this is an Intrusion Prevention System integrated into a device then that could be a pretty cool idea, but I think they will have trouble providing the same community support as snort and bleeding snort.
But right now the unclear marketing speak makes it look like snake oil.
UPDATE: Thomas Ptacek's Second Rule Of Security Marketing
If your inline network security device claims to provide "virtual patching", the box must use the actual binary patch from Microsoft to do it.


Blue Lane seems to be getting more attention. I found this post through SA's own Dimension Data's blog. I once wrote about Patch Point when a reader asked for my opinion on it. At the time their site had very little information and I suspected that the
Tracked: Jan 19, 15:47