Glenn Fink, a research scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, Wash has come up with a new way to detect threats on your network. The method consists of an army of Digital ants that mirror the behavior of real ants in the sense that the “digital scent” left behind when a threat/evidence is found. This in turn will attract more digital ants which produces a swarm that marks a potential computer infection.

This summer a study was conducted where a worm was introduced to a network which consisted of 64 computers. The army of digital ants was able to successfully identify the infected hosts. Computer users need not worry that a swarm of digital ants will decide to take up residence in their machine by mistake. Digital ants cannot survive without software “sentinels” located at each machine, which in turn report to network “sergeants” monitored by humans, who supervise the colony and maintain ultimate control.

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