Agency for Innovation in Cybersecurity research competitionProject on Protecting Critical Infrastructures Receives €2.5 Million

13 July 2023, by Newsroom editorial office

Photo: Universität Hamburg / Security in Distributed Systems

Prof. Dr. Mathias Fischer and Prof. Dr. Hannes Federrath will work on the project together with numerous partners from academia and business.

In the second round of its current research competition, the federal government’s Agency for Innovation in Cybersecurity selected 3 outstanding and very promising projects on high-level security in cyberspace for further development. One of the projects selected is SOVEREIGN, headed by Prof. Dr. Hannes Federrath and Prof. Dr. Mathias Fischer of the Department of Informatics at Universität Hamburg.

 The Universität Hamburg research team will receive €2.5 million to implement their project concept. With their SOVEREIGN concept, the researchers had already prevailed over numerous competitors in the first round of the competition, receiving €100,000 along with 5 other consortia to further develop their concept for the second round. Now, the Universität Hamburg project is one of 3 to be implemented.

Recognizing cyberattacks early with artificial intelligence

The goal of the Universität Hamburg researchers and their team is to develop a cyber-defense platform within the framework of SOVEREIGN that can be deeply integrated into critical infrastructures. The platform will be designed as a modular set so that it can be customized. What is special is that it will operate largely automatically on the basis of artificial intelligence.

“With our project, we will make an important contribution to the protection of critical infrastructures,” explains Prof. Dr. Hannes Federrath, professor of security in distributed systems at Universität Hamburg. “The platform allows operators of endangered infrastructure facilities to identify complex cyberattacks and security vulnerabilities early, to assess them, and to take the right countermeasures,” adds Prof. Dr. Mathias Fischer, professor of computer networks.

In the scope of the project, the research team will together with Helmut Schmidt University—University of the Federal Armed Forces, Universität zu Lübeck, Fraunhofer Institute for Applied and Integrated Security, Airbus, Deutsche Cyber-Sicherheitsorganisation GmbH, Tenzir GmbH, and Langlauf Security Automation GmbH, among others.

Competition: Funding totaling €30 million

The research competition Existenzbedrohende Risiken aus dem Cyber- und Informationsraum—Hochsicherheit in sicherheitskritischen und verteidigungsrelevanten Szenarien (Existential risks from cyberspace and information space—high-level security in safety-critical and defense-related scenarios) was initiated by the Agency for Innovation in Cybersecurity in 2022. The participating projects compete in a total of 5 rounds and are evaluated and judged after each round by a jury consisting of members of the Agency for Innovation in Cybersecurity and representatives of security provision as a whole. Funding totaling €30 million is available in the competition.