Patent 6,513,122 describes a firewall capable of discarding incoming data based on a predetermined set of rules, with an intrusion detection system capable of responding when the incoming data is found to include text associated with known attacks, NAI said.
The ‘122 patent, entitled Secure Gateway For Analyzing Textual Content To Identify A Harmful Impact On Computer Systems With Known Vulnerabilities, could come in handy as the markets for firewalls and IDS converge, which is already happening.
The second patent diverges somewhat from NAI’s core security competency. Patent 6,523,023 covers using a single interface to simultaneously query multiple commercial web search engines and aggregate the results.
NAI has never offered such a service, but companies including Ask Jeeves Inc and InfoSpace Inc have offered such services in the past. InfoSpace operates DogPile.com and MetaCrawler.com, which both scrape results from multiple search engines.
Some of Network Associates’ intellectual property expands beyond its own marketed technology to cover outlying technical disciplines, an NAI spokesperson explained.
Source: Computerwire
