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The Biology of Network Security
Bob Brown writes "A University of New Mexico researcher is taking lessons from biology and using them to try to stymie hackers and viruses. Projects such as RISE attempt to secure computers and networks by promoting application diversity." From the article: "Diversity of systems and applications can play a key role in safeguarding computers and networks from malicious attacks, Forrest said. Her team published a paper last year on a system dubbed RISE (Randomized Instruction Set Emulation) (PDF) that randomizes an application's machine code to stymie would-be attacks, such as those launched via binary code injection."
The key point in network security is diversity and multiple layers of security. When there is a fault (due to whatever cause) in one of the layers only that layer will be comprimised but no real severe damage done.
Ofcourse it is important that those layers are created and maintained by several entity's.
A simple example:
- Have your network guys maintain your firewalls
- Have all traffic go through a application gateway which is maintained by a third party.
- Have system administrators to secure the system
Ofcourse adding layers increases costs and security.
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So you mean they're parasites since we're using biological terminology
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No, B. germanica, like other arthropods, has two primary active immunocytes, namely the granulocytes and the plasmatocytes. The former are particularly cool in the cockroach -- their granulocytes (GRs) discover, encapsulate, and phagocytize foreign substances. In fact, unlike in other arthropods, cockroach GRs are particularly active in terms of encapsulation; they flatten and increase the number of microtubules and nuclear membrane pores. The latter mechanism enables the rapid production of tubulin by increasing the "channel width" between the ribosomes and the nuclear DNA. The former protects the GRs from the shearing forces the rapid encapsulation response creates within the cell. The cockroach GRs are in some ways closer to the human macrophage than to typical arthropod active immunocytes.
Plasmatocytes (PLs) adhere to foreign substances in a clotting response geared to isolate it from the rest of the cockroach. PLs also have a phagocytizing role in the cockroach.
Both the GRs and the PLs display an accelerated response if the organism is reintroduced to the same foreign substance. This suggests that the cockroach immunocytes have the same sort of "memory" as vertebrate neutrophils and macrophages.
Cockroaches meanwhile are also a host to a variety of microbes which provide a degree of passive immune response to common antigens -- various intestinal flora produce narrow-spectrum antibiotics which ward off dangerous infections.
Although cockroaches have somewhat weaker structural defences against infection (spiracles for breathing instead of cilliated, mucous-protected airways; low pressure in the hemolymph instead of a bleeding response which washes away microbes in the envent of a skin/chitin-penetrating trauma), they have a highly-reactive immunoresponse which is less-costly energy-wise for the individual than regenerating tissues destroyed by infection and more successful (in the evolutionary fitness sense) for the species as a whole than accepting a lowered production of viable offspring because individuals are debilitated by infectious disease.
In general the more cosmopolitan pests in Blattaria/Blattodea are biologically successful because they can cope with all sorts of toxins and microbes found in household detritus and waste that concentrates in cockroach feces, which is usually found near -- or in -- their food supply.
So you would be more right if you said that cockroaches are evolving in environments full of infectious agents, and are obviously pretty successful there.
Otherwise healthy household mammals that encounter cockroaches have little to fear from cockroaches, their "helpful" microbes, their "harmful" microbes (which are held in check by the cockroach immune system), or whatever concentrates in their feces, except that there are some humans (and probably other mammals) who suffer an intense immunoglobin-E mediated allergic reaction to many antigens which accumulate in cockroach poo.