Human Immune System Used as Model for Cybersecurity

Photo: Aleksandr Lukin

The human immune system is being used as a model to prevent attacks by hackers. Like cells in the human body, computer scientists and IT engineers are looking for computers to recognize threats and communicate among themselves, thus making them less vulnerable to attacks, according to Senior Counselor for Cybersecurity at Department of Homeland Security Bruce McConnell.

McConnell said the current manual contact between human managers in detecting virus threats should be the job of computers. He recently authored a white paper for DHS, in which he lays out a plan for a “healthy ecosystem” of computers that work together to detect problems and fight threats, among other tasks.

Discussing the lack of authenticate interactions by computers, Vice President for Cybersecurity Services at SAIC Hart Rossman said computers are limited by their programming, and if it doesn’t model the known versus the unknown, they can’t tell the self from the other.

As security threats increase, Rossman told ABC News, experts are looking at new models of “nature-inspired defense.”

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