The Taub Faculty of Computer Science Events and Talks

The immune system has several roles: protection against parasitism by viruses, bacteria and foreign or aberrant cells; repair of organ and tissue damage; and maintenance of integrity. Hence, beside ongoing routine tasks, it needs to be prepared for unforeseen - even unforeseeable - troubles. However, effective immunity has to be economical; investment in immunity must be balanced with other fitness traits. An organism needs to eat, grow, reproduce and so on. Our immune system is flexible, robust, affordable and highly distributed. Moreover, it has the ability to learn from its own experience and adapt to new challenges.

Since we became to depend on cyber in so many aspects of our lives, we need to maintain network integrity and protect it from "cyber parasites". Evidently, our current cyber security tools are not enough to face the mounting challenges of the modern cyber era. Which lessons can we learn from the immune system to enhance our protections?

Bio: Jacob Rimer received his M.Sc. degree in Computer Science from the Weizmann Institute, as the first "Open University" graduate that was accepted to the graduate school. After a career in the Hi-tech industry, he is about to finalize his PhD studies in immunology at the Weizmann Institute. His research focuses on decision making in the immune system, in particular during CD4+ T cell differentiation. He is also specialized in Cyber security, Big data, Machine learning, and more.