How our body’s defences aid computers in distress

May 22, 2006 | Source: NewScientist.com news service

The way the body’s immune system responds when its cells are under attack has inspired a new way of protecting computer networks from viruses and hackers.

Software has been developed that behaves like dendritic cells, scouring the network looking for danger signals such as sudden increases in network traffic or unusually high numbers of error messages, triggering an immune response when they increase above a preset threshold.