Are InfoSec vendors ‘sowing confusion’ and selling ‘useless’ products?

As a journalist, you know the drill at media briefings. Hosted and paid-for by a vendor, and with speakers from the company - as well as (usually) an end-user or an academic, the idea is to bring journalists together with the experts to discuss the prominent matters in the industry. And if those issues and industry challenges can be resolved with one of the vendor’s solutions then everyone’s a winner.
The vendor gets the business, the press coverage and the thought leadership, while