ORNL intern Elton Aba, recently worked with senior cyber researcher Nate Evans to study the parallels between cybersecurity and biology during his time at ORNL.

Humans can learn a lot from the environment around them, particularly from the study of animals and their biology. Their primal instincts, ways of living and unique bodily processes can offer valuable insights into our own understanding. This summer, Elton Aba an intern at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, collaborated with researchers to explore an intriguing intersection: how biology can inform cybersecurity. Aba shared some of his findings on how biomimicry could help secure our nation's critical infrastructure.

Aba, a junior at Bearden High School in Knoxville, grew interested in cybersecurity after taking computer science classes offered through his high school. Following an opportunity to tour ORNL and some encouragement from a teacher, he applied and was accepted into the summer internship program the lab.

Aba worked with senior cyber researcher Nate Evans on a bio-inspired cybersecurity approach to defending systems. Focusing on the parallels between biological and artificial defense systems, Aba and Evans aim to learn more from animals, humans and other living organisms about how to defend against an attack.

"Artificial immune systems, model biological immune systems" Aba said. "Your skin can represent a firewall or an intrusion detection system. It is the first line of defense in computer networks and your skin is the first line of defense against viruses."

As far as animals are concerned, Aba pointed to ants. He described how they go about gathering food for their colonies as they spread out over a specific area. Once the food is collected, they return to their habitat with a small parcel of what they've found, leaving behind hints of pheromones to alert other ants in the colony of the newfound food source.

For Aba, this brings to mind cybersecurity anomalies or threats.

"You could have this swarm of individual sensors looking through your system, trying to find an anomaly, and when one sensor determines there is something odd going on, it would attract other sensors to come and look at it from different perspectives," Aba said.

The biggest challenge Aba has identified in this research is being able to implement it. Mimicking and artificially developing biological defense systems seen in organisms is complex, and deploying them across an entire cyber network would demand substantial resources. Consequently, Aba's research is limited to reviewing the current state of cybersecurity in biology. Still, Aba hopes to someday take the work he did at ORNL and be able to move forward in finding a way to better mimic our natural defense systems for the benefit of cybersecurity.

As the cyber world continues to expand, the need for research like Evans' and Aba's is critical as it takes a more proactive approach to cybersecurity mitigations, where most current approaches are reactive. The Internet Crime Complaint Center, sponsored by the FBI, reported $12.5 billion lost from cybercrime in the last year. With technology advancing, and with hackers continuing to evolve in sophistication, the demand for increased security and a pathway to get ahead is rising. Researchers can look to proven mechanisms of protection, such as those used for millions of years in biology, to think differently about cyber defense.

UT-Battelle manages ORNL for DOE's Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.

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