Immunix provides an adaptive response to security vulnerabilities to make systems more survivable against security vulnerbilities. Like bioligical systems, adaptive systems can respond to threats as they happen, and provide heterogeneity so that large clusters of systems are not simultaneously vulnerable to the same attack. Automatically and continuously permutating a system's implementation changes the particular vulnerabilities in the system. Would-be intruders are forced to discover new flaws upon each intrusion attempt. If individual nodes within a protection domain have different implementations, then a single implementation flaw will not result in all the notes in the domain suffering the same vulnerability.
Static systems force administrators and users to choose between security and convenience.
Adaptive systems, however, can dynamically alter the level of service offered in response to the present level of security threat.