Question: What Inspired you to use the human immune system and see how its linked with hacking and computers?

Julie Greensmith answered on 14 Jun 2011:

What a fantastic question! The human immune system has always been my favourite part of biology. It keeps us safe from invaders, and repairs us when we are damaged. As we go through our life and we come across germs we’ve not seen before it can change and adapt its cells to help us fight off this infection. Just like you can only get chicken pox once, as your immune system has adapted to deal withit. Its really amazing. So what on earth is the link with hacking and computers?

Well, we figured that some attacks on computers behave the same as the way that germs attack people. So if we have an immune system for biological viruses, could we build a computer-based artificial immune system to protect computers from computer viruses?

I built one of the systems to do this. It took me in total 5 years to design, build, test and re-test the system. Now my artificial immune system features in programs protecting some of the busiest computers in the world. So our artificial immune system tells us if it detects damage to a computer system caused by computer hackers, just as the way our throat swells up if we have a throat infection.