Computer immunology

Abstract

Natural immune systems protect animals from dangerous foreign pathogens, including bacteria, viruses, parasites, and toxins. Their role in the body is analogous to that of computer security systems in computing. Although there are many differences between living organisms and computers, the similarities are compelling and could point the way to improved computer security. Improvements can be achieved by designing computer immune systems with some of the important properties of natural immune systems, including multilayered protection, highly distributed detector. The computer security problem is difficult. There are many legitimate changes to self, like new users and new programs, and many paths of intrusion, and the periphery of a networked computer is less clearly defined than the periphery of an individual animal. Firewalls attempt to construct such a periphery, often with limited success. As an initial step toward defining self in a realistic computing environment, programmers are developing an intrusion-detection system for networked computers. Discrimination must be based on some characteristic structure that is both compact and universal in the protected system. INSET: A Database of Normal Patterns.