Danger theory and collaborative filtering in MANETs

As more organizations grasp the tremendous benefits of Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs) in tactical situations such as disaster recovery or battlefields, research has begun to focus on ways to secure such environments. Unfortunately, the very factors that make MANETs effective (fluidity, resilience, and decentralization) pose tremendous challenges for those tasked with securing such environments. Our prior work in the field led to the design of BITSI – the Biologically-Inspired Tactical Security Infrastructure. BITSI implements a simple artificial immune system based upon Danger Theory. This approach moves beyond self/non-self recognition and instead focuses on systemic damage in the form of deviation from mission parameters. In this paper, we briefly review our prior work on BITSI and our simulation environment, and then present the application of collaborative filtering techniques. Our results are encouraging, and show that collaborative filtering significantly improves classification error rate and response within the MANET environment. Finally, we explore the implications of the results for further work in the field, and describe our plans for new research.