Computer viruses have been a constant companion to personal computers for over ten years. Protecting against viruses is getting more challenging year after year as the Internet grows and communications software becomes more tightly integrated with normal business activities.

IBM has been preparing a defense against fast spreading viruses for several years. The Digital Immune System for Cyberspace can automatically detect viral activity during early spread, automatically develop a cure and distribute it across the Internet faster than the virus spreads. Deploying a commercially viable system demands expertise reaching from basic research in neural networks that distinguish virus from non-virus to extremely fast pattern recognition to networks that remain effective even during computer virus epidemics.

We have built the first commercial-grade immune system that can find, analyze and cure previously unknown viruses faster than the viruses themselves can spread by eliminating the need for human intervention. The system solves several important problems.

Samples are captured automatically and before submission, irrelevant and possibly confidential user information is stripped from the sample. A novel active network architecture permits the system to handle a vast number of customer submissions quickly, so the system can handle floods due to an epidemic of a fast-spreading virus.

The analysis center can analyze most viruses automatically, and with greater speed and precision than human analysts can. The analysis center runs the viruses in a virtual environment, so the process is safe and lets our programs analyze the behavior of the virus in real time.

Viruses can be replicated in a number of operating system and application environments, including various national languages. Both the active network and the analysis center are scaleable, so the system can easily accommodate ever-increasing loads. End-to-end security of the system allows the safe submission of virus samples and ensures authentication of new virus definitions.

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