Self-Healing Networks on the Horizon

These days, if you are not taking cybersecurity seriously, then you are waiting for something bad to happen that could potentially destroy your business for good. While the number of threats out there has increased significantly over the past couple of decades, so too has the number of powerful security options out there. In fact, one way that you can leverage these solutions to your advantage is to use “self-healing” security software, the concept for which is pretty neat.

Self-Healing Software Has Been Developed and Adopted

ABN Amro, a major Dutch bank, and Nederlandse Organisatie voor Toegepast Natuurwetenschappelijk Onderzoek (also known as the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research, or TNO) are working together to design better ways to protect financial institutions. The end result of this partnership is looking to the human body for lessons that can be learned about security.

A Brief Biology Lesson

The human body is incredibly efficient at refreshing itself, constantly recycling and replacing old cells. Cells naturally die off and need to be replaced over time, so the body is constantly stripping out cells that it thinks might be infected or damaged and replacing them with new, more healthy ones.

This periodic replacement is known as the principle of disposability, and it can also be applied to cybersecurity in the following ways:

• Undetected infections are protected against
• If there is suspicion of an infection, your protections are automatically elevated

The system created in the above scenario emulates the principle of disposability, allowing it to repair itself and register when it must do so.

There is Little Question That These Tools Could Be Useful to Businesses

It’s clear that this represents a huge opportunity for businesses, so you can look forward to organizations jumping at the opportunity as soon as this technology is made public. Eventually, it might even become the new standard for cybersecurity. But for now, all we can do is wait.

The perfect way to bide your time is by taking advantage of the next best thing: managed IT services from Computerware. We can fulfill the same role as any security solution by remotely monitoring and maintaining your company’s infrastructure. To learn more, reach out to us at (703) 821-8200.