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 computer systems, we believe that the similarities are compelling and could point the way to improved computer security. Four examples of how we are applying ideas from immunology to todays computer security problems are a host based intrusiondetection method, a network based intrusiondetection system, a distributable changedetection algorithm, and a method for intentionally introducing diversity to reduce vulnerability. The analogy with immunology contributes an important point of view about how to achieve computer security, one that can potentially lead to systems built with quite different sets of assumptions, biases, and organizing principles than in the past.

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Website: http://www.cs.unm.edu/~immsec/