Don’t know much about biology? Security expert says you should

Security researcher Stephanie Forrest from the University of New Mexico spoke recently at an IT forum at Boston University about lessons that can be learned from biology that can be applied to network and computer security. While this isn’t a new thought (terms such as anti-virus have been around for a while now, for example), it is an idea that seems to have ever-growing support. Forrest’s pet project in recent years, dubbed RISE, supports the idea that the more diverse a computer network is, the less likely it is to be overtaken by hackers or viruses. “One reason computers are so vulnerable to attack is that they are all the same,” Forrest said. Read more about the project and her thoughts here. And while you might assume her work is being funded by the open source industry, she doesn’t appear to be an open source suck-up. In fact, during her talk she said the open source Valgrind program used to provide virtual machine technology needed quite a bit of work.

Bob Brown, bbrown@nww.com