I was amused by the article title, on MSNBC.com this morning, but the title is accurate and an interesting new way to fight computer viruses and hopefully malware as well. (For a definition of malware and how to combat it on your computer, go to my business site, Murray Learning.)
Basically, researchers have "created an army of digital ants and their superior officers, digital sergeants and sentinels, to search out viruses, worms and other malware." Using the structure found in ant colonies and modeling human immune system behaviors, the researchers' small digital army was able to successfully identify threats on several computers the researchers had intentionally infected.
This is a promising new way to address computer threats and relies more on hardware resources than software resources, so the detection process can work constantly yet not interfere with human computing needs.
I hope to see more on this topic in the near future, as the time and money wasted on detecting and removing threats from our computers, as well as the disruption to our normal computing time -- whether it be for work or pleasure -- makes it a high priority in my book.
If you know of other novel approaches to virus and malware threats, respond to this post and let me know. I'll look into it. If it looks promising, I'll blog it.
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