Collaborative Research Centre CROSSING - Cryptography as the Basis for Trust in the Internet of Things

Cryptography is an essential prerequisite for ensuring that complex services and applications in new and future IT systems are trustworthy. Computer scientist Professor Stefan Katzenbeisser from the University of Passau leads a subproject in the DFG Collaborative Research Centre CROSSING at the TU Darmstadt.

Existing cryptographic and cryptography-based security solutions do not meet nearly all the requirements that arise in new and future IT environments. The inadequacy of current cryptography represents a major obstacle to the development of trust in current and future IT systems and thus to the positive development of society and business.

Therefore, the overall goal of the Collaborative Research Centre CROSSING at the TU Darmstadt is: To develop cryptography-based security solutions that enable trust in current and future IT systems. The solutions will meet the efficiency and security requirements of these IT environments and will be securely implemented. IT developers, administrators and end users will be able to use these solutions easily, even if they are not experts in cryptography. 

In CROSSING, researchers from complementary fields such as cryptography, system security and software engineering are working together to achieve this goal. 

Subproject: Long-Term Secure Archiving of Critical Data 

Prof. Dr. Stefan Katzenbeisser, Chair of Computer Engineering, leads the subproject S6 "Long-term secure archiving" in CROSSING. The project develops techniques that enable the long-term secure storage of digital data. This problem is becoming increasingly important, as much data, for example in the healthcare sector, must be stored securely for many decades. On the other hand, however, there is the "short lifespan" of many cryptographic processes. The aim of the project is to design a cryptographically secured archiving system that allows distributed access to large volumes of archived data.