Active Countermeasures models the human body's immune reaction to invasion by microbes. It runs a periodic vulnerability analysis based on the latest advisories from security monitoring organizations such as CERT, prioritizes the threats, scans the network for vulnerable machines, then automatically deploys a payload of prevention. . . .
Active Countermeasures models the human body's immune reaction to invasion by microbes. It runs a periodic vulnerability analysis based on the latest advisories from security monitoring organizations such as CERT, prioritizes the threats, scans the network for vulnerable machines, then automatically deploys a payload of prevention.

"We'll use the same opening the hacker used to get [malignant] code onto the machine," said HP Labs' distinguished technologist Joe Pato. Through that opening, a sort of vaccination in the form of a payload of code to deal with the threat is delivered. The countermeasures in the payload are determined by policies pre-set by the organization, and could include everything from popping up an alert on the threatened machine to automatically quarantining it from the network.

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