Patching Snake Oil

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.