This morning, I moderated a panel on "Managing Complexity with the Santa Fe Institute at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos. One of the featured thought leaders was Stephanie Forrest, a computer scientist who is among the world's leading thinkers on the topic of cyber crime and how to fight it. She makes a fascinating suggestion – that by fostering consistency and homogeneity in our systems, they are hugely more vulnerable to single attacks. Instead, she's working on developing systems in which the interfaces and functionality of various systems is the same, but within the system unique programming makes it difficult for a single virus to propogate across multiple systems, mimicking in some ways the way the immune system works in biological systems.
She explained what were undoubtedly incredibly complex ideas in a most accessible way. You can read more about Professor Forrest and her work at this link.