On decision support for distributed systems protection: A perspective based on the human immune response system and epidemiology

Information system availability is contingent on a robust security infrastructure that provides protection via preventive, detective, and corrective mechanisms. In this paper, we provide architecture inspired by biological metaphors from immunology and epidemiology for the security infrastructure of distributed information systems. The proposed architecture consists of an immunological model at the micro-level to detect and identify computer pathogens (e.g. viruses and worms), and an epidemiological model at the macro-level to identify distributed attacks.