A Conceptual Framework of Starlings Swarm Intelligence Intrusion Prevention for Software Defined Networks

The idea of using the defense mechanism observed in some bird species such as starlings has not yet been exploited in the development of Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS). Starlings are self-organized with a characteristic of collective response. Starlings as prey have a way of detecting single or multiple predatory attacks and responding to danger that may be visible to only a small fraction of individuals in the flock [1]. The ability of starlings to evade predators is associated with several factors, including murmuration, collective response and confusion effect. These factors are detailed as follows: (1) Murmuration: this is a phenomenon that hampers predation success [2]. It follows three simple rules, namely cohesion, alignment, and separation; other rules include predator avoidance and flee behaviour [3]. (2) Collective response: this is the way the whole group responds to its environment. For gregarious animals under strong predatory pressure collective response is vital and in fact it is the hallmark of self-organized order as opposed to centralized order [4]. (3) Confusion Effect: this is a phenomenon describing that decreasing predator attack success is associated with increasing prey group size in the eye of the predator. Benedict et al [5] used a computer game style experiment to investigate the confusion effect in threedimensions, but the authors used human predators to track and capture a target starling. In this research we conducted a similar experiment in two-dimensions with both prey and predator simulated instead of (human) predator to further investigate the confusion effect and collective response.