Our world is becoming increasingly more connected. With more devices and systems interacting with each other, the potential for cyber-attacks and other infrastructure incidents is multiplying. As businesses and consumers become more reliant on digital systems, the stakes are getting higher.
A digital immune system (DIS) is a software development practice for safeguarding applications and services from software bugs and security flaws. The DIS approach combines software engineering strategies, design, development, automation, operations, technologies, and analytics—all to cut down on operational failures, mitigate business risks, and enhance user experience.
The Digital Immune System is a comprehensive approach to virus protection developed by IBM.
The immune system is made up of two parts: the innate, (general) immune system and the adaptive (specialised) immune system. These two systems work closely together and take on different tasks.
Traditionally the virus threat was characterised by the relatively slow spread of new viruses and new mutations. Anti-virus software was typically updated on a monthly basis and this has been sufficient to control the problem.
DIS works by constantly monitoring and scanning computer systems and networks to detect potential threats and vulnerabilities and take necessary precautions to avoid them. It detects malicious communications, identifies compromised devices, and applies security patches.
Slow or poorly performing systems compromise the UX, resulting in customer dissatisfaction and, in many cases, leading customers to abandon transactions or products.
A DIS will try to eliminate or at least minimise the frequency of system failures and slowness.
DIS improves the quality of a software by making it more secure, resilient, and reliable, so that it can rapidly recover from failures. It addresses threats and vulnerabilities across the entire software development life cycle.
By automating the testing process, we can detect and eliminate any issues or errors with the software from a usability, security, and performance standpoint. And while manual testing can be slow and costly, automation allows us to find bugs quickly and effectively without having to sacrifice quality.