KASTEL

Brief description of the project

The Competence Center for Applied Security Technology (KASTEL) is one of three competence centers  for cyber security in Germany, which were initiated by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)  in March 2011.

Project goals and results

Following the motto “Comprehensible security in the networked world”, KASTEL is meeting the challenges posed by the increasing interconnection of previously isolated systems.

Of particular importance are the consequences of digitalization in the area of critical infrastructures, for example in the energy economy, in industrial production or networked mobility, but also in "intelligent" environments. KASTEL bundles the competencies in the field of IT security at the research location Karlsruhe. The goal is to develop a widespread approach instead of isolated partial solutions. The focus will be on comprehensive security in specific application areas, such as power grids or intelligent factories.To ensure this security, new threats need to be modeled, security objectives need to be described and new methods have to be developed.

This can only be achieved through the cooperation of cryptographers, IT-security specialists, software-engineers, network experts, jurists, economics and social scientists.

KASTEL started in 2011 with a provisional term of four years. The goal was to conduct interdisciplinary research and answer questions about IT security that were to be put to practical use on the basis of prototypes and scenarios. This section, known as Phase 1, was completed in autumn of 2015. After a successful evaluation, the BMBF extended the duration of the competence centers and KASTEL started the second phase with newly defined research fields and projects.