Security Lab Seminar
July 9, 2004

Speaker: Dipankar Dasgupta
Visiting Faculty, NASA Ames Research Center
The University of Memphis
Memphis, TN 38152
Email: dasgupta@memphis.edu

Title: Biological Immune System as a Defense System: Lessons Learned

Abstract: The biological immune system is an elaborate defense system which has evolved over millions of years probably through extensive redesigning, testing, tuning and optimization process. While many details of the immune mechanisms (innate and adaptive) and processes (humeral and cellular) are yet unknown (even to immunologists), it is, however, well-known that the immune system uses multilevel (and overlapping) defense both in parallel and sequential fashion. Depending on the type of the pathogen, and the way it gets into the body, the immune system uses different response mechanisms (differential pathways) either to neutralize the pathogenic effect or to destroy the infected cells. Our body is continuously exposed to various pathogens (known/unknown/harmful/benign) and handles most of them in an amazing delicacy. Still this is not a full proof system; malaria, plague and other epidemics wiped out a large population at different times in history, and we are continually struggling to deal with new pathogenic challenges.

From the information processing point of view, several immunological principles make it very appealing, which include distributed processing, (partial) decentralized control, and self/non-self recognition. These principles provide various immune properties like learning, memory, adaptation, feature extraction, signaling, etc.

We can learn lessons from the biological system in order to build robust and adaptive cyber defense system. In this talk, I will discuss various works of Immunity-Based Computer Security Systems and describe our on-going research on developing Immunity-Based intrusion detection systems.

Bio-Sketch: DIPANKAR DASGUPTA
Dr. Dipankar Dasgupta is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Memphis, Tennessee, USA. His research interests are broadly in the area of scientific computing, tracking real-world problems through interdisciplinary cooperation. His areas of special interests include Artificial Immune Systems, Genetic Algorithms, Neural Networks, multi-agent systems and their applications. He received research funding from different federal organizations including NAVY, NSF, and DARPA. He published more than 100 papers in book chapters, journals, and international conferences. He edited two books: one is on Genetic Algorithms and the other entitled "Artificial Immune Systems and Their Applications" published by Springer-Verlag, 1999. The book on Artificial Immune Systems is the first book in the field and widely use as a reference book. Dr. Dasgupta is a senior member of IEEE, ACM; he regularly serves as panelist, keynote speaker and program committee member (5-6 per year) in many International Conferences. Dr. Dasgupta edited a special issue (on Artificial Immune Systems) of IEEE Evolutionary Computation Journal, Volume 6, Number 3, June 2002. He is currently an associate editor of the journal IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation. He also got nominated as the chair of IEEE Task Force on Artificial Immune Systems. His research lab regularly updates AIS Bibliography and publishes on the web (available at http://issrl.cs.memphis.edu/AIS/ais_bibliography.pdf).

One of Dr. Dasgupta's current researches is to build a robust cyber defense system by applying intelligent agents, genetic algorithms, neural networks, fuzzy logic and immune system techniques in the area of computer security. He is the founder of a Network Security Lab for doing research, and training on Security related issues (our lab website: http://issrl.cs.memphis.edu).