Now here’s an ant farm

I stumbled upon an interesting piece at the Wake Forest University site.  In Eric Frazier’s piece, Ants vs. worms (you can read it here) he describes how new security programs are being designed to thwart computer security threats by taking a page out of mother nature’s book. These “digital ants” are made to seek out threats in computer networks and pretty soon after a threat is detected, the “ants” gather conspicuously enough to get the attention of their human supervisors. The assemblage is part of what is called “swarm intelligence” and to me their most intriguing aspect is that they’re adaptable as threats change. That’s where malware today is so successful – as it evolves (even ever so slightly) it’s able to keep a step ahead of known malware defenses.  

I expect that Glenn Fink’s (research scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) inspired notion of imitating the activities of ants an applying that behavior in a digital setting will prove invaluable in the cyber security realm.