Penn State Develops "Self-Healing" Software

The Cyber Security Group at Pennsylvania State University's School of Information Sciences and Technology has developed 'cutting edge' software that can repair a database program even while it continues to perform transactions and process data. Scientists claim that the software is capable of quarantining malicious commands sent to database management programs while any damage that may have occurred to the programs are self-corrected. The U.S. Air Force and The Cyber Security Group are currently testing a prototype version of this software. Penn State's software reportedly allows databases to be "adaptive," to avoid data loss or other damage, and can be adapted for static repairs and/or for fixes that can unwind a chain of corrupted commands. "The database can adapt its own behavior and reconfigure itself based on the attack," according to Professor Liu, the main developer of the software of Cyber Security Group.

Several commercial software manufacturers are working on their own versions of self-healing technology. IBM announced a few weeks ago that it would open a hub for research and product development in 'autonomic computing' (computer systems that can configure, tune and repair themselves). But Penn State's research is said to be heads above other software development efforts. "There are various tools that can detect anomalies, but they simply generate a report or display that calls someone's attention to it," Carl Olofson, an analyst at IDC, said of current products on the market. "The interesting part of the (Penn State) research...is the ability to automatically respond to the attack."