Introducing Biological Mechanisms To Computer Security Students

Biology has broad impact on computer security.Many computer security approaches to defense originate from the observation of biological phenomena.However, students majoring in computer security are often lack of knowledge in these biological mechanisms and thus have difficulties in correlating the two seemingly unrelated fields.In this paper we introduce a few biological security mechanisms, such as the cryptographic and steganographic processing of biological information expressed in DNA, RNA, and protein sequences, the defensive actions against invading pathogens conducted by biological immune system, and the improved survivability of a species through bio-diversity, to bring students to a higher level in understanding biologically inspired security mechanisms and in drawing new security paradigms from the most recent developments in biology.Not only do we ask students in computer security to carry out comparative study of biological mechanisms and computer security algorithms, but also encourage faculty to develop new curriculum that can facilitate this objective.Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the subject, it is necessary to involve faculty from both computer science and biology to train students with the knowledge that are transferrable across professional boundaries.