Survival in cyberspace

The immune system response of the vertebrates demonstrates an extremely adaptive and resilient defensive capability against a broad spectrum of pathogenic attacks. The field of artificial immune systems (AISs) aims to replicate this capability in the digital environment. In particular, we would like to understand adaptive survivability and defence in large-scale computing networks. In this paper we discuss some of the background concepts to AIS and focus on one specific aspect required to achieve a digital immune system, i.e. the social dynamics of competitive and co-operative defence. In particular, the ability of an information network to maintain itself in the face of continuous perturbation raises more complex issues related to system metabolism and network topology.In order to investigate these processes a multi-agent simulation model has been developed that demonstrates a self-organising group formation capability and a collective immune response. In this model each agent is susceptible to viral infections passed between the agents and has local sensors and a complex metabolic state that reflects its current health. We then introduced an artificial immune system to each agent that allowed learned ‘antibody’ solutions to be exchanged between the agents within a social group. The health of a co-operative group was observed to improve by over 90%, relative to isolated agents or non-cooperative groups. The specific solutions advocated are therefore to utilise distributed defence mechanisms and the monitoring of metabolic processes to detect intrusions. Finally, the paper considers the problem of how we might utilise such knowledge to develop greater security and robustness in real-world networks using distributed agent systems.