Immunological memoryThe mechanisms by which the vertebrate immune system retains a lifelong memory of viruses to which it has been exposed are quite complex, and are still the subject of study and debate. By contrast, immunological memory is absolutely trivial to implement in computers. During its first encounter with a new virus, a computer system may be ``ill'', i.e. it will devote a fair amount of time and energy (or CPU cycles) to virus analysis. After the analysis is complete, the extracted signature and verification/repair information can be added to the appropriate known-virus databases. During any subsequent encounter, detection and elimination of the virus will occur very quickly. In such a case the computer can be thought of as ``immune'' to the virus.
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