Bio-hacking: Tapping Life's Code to Deal with Unpredictable Risk

The biological world--full of salty tidepools and steaming jungles--would seem to be a long way from the clean rooms and server farms of the information technology world. But these ecosystems converge strongly in the realm of security, where the 3.5 billion year history of life has numerous lessons for improving security in the far younger world of computing. The convergence lies in the fact that all organisms in nature deal with the exact problems that all IT managers, developers, hackers, and cybersecurity officers face--that the world is full of risk that cannot be eliminated and is largely unpredictable. Despite living amidst constant risk and uncertainty, nature has not only survived, but thrived and expanded throughout biological history.