DHS Commercializes Two Nature-Themed Cyber Products

Nextgov: The Homeland Security Department has successfully transitioned two federally funded pieces of cybersecurity technology to be marketed to the commercial tech sector.

Scientists at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory modeled MLSTONES and Digital Ants after phenomena found in nature. MLSTONES is a set of algorithms that use principles from protein sequencing to identify similarities in data sets—it searches large data sets for smaller ones, zeroing in on segments of malicious code. Digital Ants uses sensors that search networks for key metrics like CPU usage and network bandwidth. If those sensors find malware, they draw other sensors—just as one insect might attract a swarm of others—to the anomaly and then notify system administrators.

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