Profile Topic Cybersecurity and Privacy

Collaborative Research Projects

Collaborative research projects are projects in which scientists from different disciplines and often across universities work together to solve complex research questions and challenges that cannot be adequately addressed by a single discipline.

Current projects

Directors Prof. Michael Waidner
Duration since 2019
Website www.athene-center.de
Short description In the National Research Centre for Applied Cybersecurity, ATHENE (formerly CRISP), the TU Darmstadt with its profile topic Cybersecurity and Privacy, the University of Applied Sciences Darmstadt as well as the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology SIT and the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research IGD have joined forces to form Europe's largest alliance of research institutions in the field of cybersecurity. The approximately 450 scientists work on core issues of cybersecurity in society, business, and administration. They regularly advise business and public administration, provide assistance for new entrepreneurs and prepare expert reports for politics and business. ATHENE is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the state of Hesse.
Directors Prof. Max Mühlhäuser
Duration 10/2015 – 12/2024
Website https://www.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de/privacy-trust/
Short description The Doctoral College “Privacy and Trust for Mobile Users” is a highly interdisciplinary collaboration between Computer Science and the fields of Law, Sociology, Information Systems (in Economics), and Usability (in Psychology) funded as Research Training Group by the German National Science Foundation (DFG). The doctoral college aims at improving the position of mobile users—think of Smartphone users—vis-a-vis Internet-based services, social networks, and sensor-augmented environments (summarized as 'networks').
Directors Prof. Marc Fischlin
Duration 6/2014 – 5/2026
Website www.crossing.tu-darmstadt.de
Short description A major hindrance to the development of trust in present and future computing environments is the inadequacy of current cryptography. The goal of the collaborative research center CROSSING is to provide cryptography-based security solutions enabling trust in new and next generation computing environments. The solutions will meet the efficiency and security requirements of the new environments and will have sound implementations. They will be easy to use for developers, administrators, and end users of IT, even if they are not cryptography experts.

Current Project Participation

Directors Prof. Petra Gehring
Duration since 11/2019
Website https://zevedi.de/
Short description The Centre Responsible Digitality (ZEVEDI) is a research network which actively reaches out into politics, society and the economy. It combines the scientific expertise of researchers based at Hessian universities in order to analyse the ethical and legal dimensions of digital transformation, thus contributing to shaping this transformation. ZEVEDI identifies and discusses responsibility as a crucial yet uncertain aspect of technological development and aims at making responsible digitality conceivable as well as practically feasible. ZEVEDI engages in research projects, promotes the transfer of scientific knowledge into society and the economy and provides research-based policy advice on the topic – for a digital transformation guided by a democratic and humane orientation.

European Center for Security and Privacy by Design (EC SPRIDE)

Directors Prof. Michael Waidner
Duration 10/2011 – 9/2015
Website -
Short description The European Center for Security and Privacy by Design (EC SPRIDE) was a competence center funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The successor project is ATHENE, the National Research Center for Applied Cybersecurity. EC SPRIDE understood security and data protection as requirements that must already be taken into account in the design of IT-based systems and observed over the complete life cycle of systems.

LOEWE research cluster NICER (project participation)

Directors Prof. Matthias Hollick
Duration 2015 – 2018
Website https://www.nicer.tu-darmstadt.de
Short description Networked Infrastructureless Cooperation for Emergency Response (NICER) was a LOEWE priority program funded by the Hessian Ministry of Science and the Arts (HMWK). NICER researched how infrastructureless information and communication technology can network people in the event of a crisis and thus enable cooperation to manage the crisis.

Priority Programme Reliably Secure Software Systems (RS3)

Directors Prof. Heiko Mantel
Duration 1/2018 – 12/2022
Website https://www.software-factory-4-0.de/
Short description The LOEWE focus area Software Factory 4.0 (SF4.0) is a 4-year project funded by the German State of Hesse. SF4.0 is concerned with the adaptation of legacy software due to changed requirements and technical advances. The project strives to achieve this adaptation in an automated fashion. The main focus is on three topics: more flexible software systems in the context of the application area “Industrie 4.0”, the parallelization of existing software in the context of “High Performance Computing” (HPC), and simplification of the re-engineering in both areas.

LOEWE Center CASED

Directors Prof. Johannes Buchmann, Prof. Michael Waidner
Duration 7/2008 – 6/2016
Website https://proloewe.de/de/loewe-vorhaben/nach-themen/cased/
Short description The Center for Advanced Security Research Darmstadt (CASED) was a LOEWE center funded by the Hessian Ministry of Science and the Arts (HMWK). In this institution, the TU Darmstadt, the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology SIT and the Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences bundled their competencies on the topic of IT security starting in July 2008. The successor project is ATHENE, the National Research Center for Applied Cyber Security.

National reference project for IT security in industry 4.0 (IUNO)

Directors Prof. Reiner Anderl
Duration 6/2014 – 9/2018
Website https://iuno-projekt.de/
Short description IUNO, the National Reference Project on IT Security in Industry 4.0, was funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and brought together 21 partners from industry and research. In IUNO, threats and risks for the smart factory were identified, protective measures developed and implemented as examples in four use cases. The aim was to develop solutions for IT security challenges in the industrial application field that could be used as generally as possible, in order to make them available to companies. The tested and transferable IT security solutions were then compiled in a toolbox and can be used as a “blueprint” for secure Industry 4.0. Small and medium-sized companies in particular, which have so far decided against digitizing production due to incalculable economic risks, can thus use the opportunities of the digital transformation for themselves.

Priority Programme Reliably Secure Software Systems (RS3)

Directors Prof. Heiko Mantel
Duration 10/2010 – 9/2017
Website https://www.spp-rs3.de/
Short description This Priority Programme assumed that a paradigm shift in IT-security is necessary in order to reliably guarantee the security of complex software systems. The current trust-based and mechanism-centric approaches to IT-security were to be complemented by property-oriented solutions. This paradigm shift was to enable a trustworthy certification of system-wide, technical security guarantees that adequately respects the semantics of programs and of security requirements. Bridging the gap from security in-the-small to security in-the-large involved the improvement of conceptual foundations, the development of analysis and engineering tools, and their migration into practice. Collaborations between multiple sub-disciplines of Computer Science, primarily formal methods, IT-security, and programming languages, were necessary to achieve the objectives of the programme.