I love it when people think creatively and start modeling things on other things that may or may not be obvious choices. Case in point, I just finished reading an article on Science Daily that details how a group of IT security professionals decided to model a new computer security approach on the ant.
It makes sense. There’s not that many animals in nature more effective at dividing up labor and handling security. Don’t believe me? Step on an ant hill and don’t move your foot. When I was a kid my sister decided that would be a funny thing to get me to do, so I’m two years old shrieking “they’re biting my pee pee!” and running in circles. I love my sister.
The idea is basically more like a monitoring process. Little processes (ants) are released in the environment looking for certain telltale behaviors. When an ant finds something, it releases the digital equivalent of a scent message that attracts other ants. When enough ants agree that there is an issue, the attraction will be strong enough to draw more and more ants. Swarming will trigger a reaction that ultimately alerts the human operators to deal with the problem.