Article

10. September 2018

In cooperation with the TH Köln/University of Applied Sciences, iesy is developing a hardware and software solution in the course of a ZIM project (central innovation programme), which secures communication. The development focuses on security and usability as well as on privacy.

Large parts of the population are more prone to secure communication ever since Edward Snowdens revelations. Private data should remain private, especially when communicating with other online users. This is exactly where a joint project of iesy and the TH Köln/University of Applied Sciences comes in, which was launched at the end of 2017. The cooperation was made possible by the Central Innovation Programme for SMEs (ZIM) of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy (BMWi). The programme is intended to sustainably support the innovative strength and competitiveness of companies in Germany and to promote market-oriented technological research and development projects of innovative SMEs in close cooperation with research institutions.

Focus on security and usability

For the development of a secure and easy-to-use communication solution based on software and hardware, iesy was able to win over a renowned research institute for data and application security in the form of the Technical University of Cologne and the team led by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Luigi Lo Iacono. Especially the profound expertise of Mr. Lo Iacono in the field of Usable Security played an important role for iesy in the selection of the research partner, as Managing Director Martin Steger emphasizes: "From the very beginning, TH Köln understood our goal of developing a user-friendly IT security solution and provided important input for the concretization of the idea as well as towards the application for funding".

By the end of 2019, both cooperation partners plan to develop their software and hardware solution to market maturity, supported by the ZIM funding program of the federal government. "We want to enable users to communicate securely and easily online. Current security mechanisms are either inadequate or too complicated to operate. Only the combination of software and hardware can create a solution that is as effective and easy to use as users expect today," Prof. Dr. Lo Iacono explains the goal. He does not elaborate on this since more detail would put risk on an innovation that can be used all over the world. And as security experts, iesy and the TH Köln know how to protect a secret.