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WELCOME
TO CISPA

At the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security, we explore cybersecurity, privacy, and trustworthy artificial intelligence in all their many facets. A national Big Science institution within the Helmholtz Association, CISPA is the world's leading research center in the field of cybersecurity. Providing a first-rate research environment and extensive resources to our researchers, CISPA strives to be an extraordinary place for the world's best scientific talent.

CISPA HIGHLIGHTS

CISPA and Technical University of Munich start cooperation

ERC Consolidator Grant for CISPA-Faculty Dr. Sebastian Stich

CISPA researcher Andreas Zeller inducted into Academia Europaea

OUR RESEARCH

Cybersecurity research for today and tomorrow.
 

CISPA’S LATEST CONFERENCE CONTRIBUTIONS

CISPA researchers regularly take part in, and help organize, outstanding scientific conferences around the world. According to the CSRankings, a metrics-based ranking of top computer science institutions around the world, CISPA is the internationally leading institution in computer security.

11 PAPERS AT
NDSS SYMPOSIUM 2025

NDSS Logo

11 PAPERS AT
NEURIPS 2024

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20 PAPERS AT
ACM CCS 2024

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2 PAPERS AT
CRYPTO 2024

IACR Logo

23 PAPERS AT
USENIX SECURITY SYMPOSIUM 2024

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14 PAPERS AT
ICML 2024

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19 PAPERS AT
IEEE S&P 2024

ACM CCS Logo

11 PAPERS AT
EUROCRYPT 2024

IACR Logo

8 PAPERS AT
ICLR 2024

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FACULTY VOICES

Security research in today’s interconnected world has so many different challenges. I am particularly excited about making complex security and privacy mechanisms more human-friendly.

Dr. Katharina Krombholz
Faculty

We are trying to determine ways to ascertain that current and future systems are secure. To achieve this, we develop analysis frameworks, methodologies, and tools. These enable us to identify attacks and propose more secure solutions.

Prof. Dr. Cas Cremers
Faculty

My group researches novel classes of vulnerabilities in Web applications and builds tools to detect and mitigate them. In addition, we investigate how to best notify affected sites about the vulnerabilities we found. This way, our insights do not only serve us, but can help administrators close their security holes, impacting the overall security of the Web.

Dr. Ben Stock
Faculty

Mobile devices can pose severe privacy threats but at the same time offer with their particular setting great opportunities to create more secure systems that put the users back into control over their data. In our research, we take this opportunity and improve mobile system security from hardware primitives to middleware design to the user's central role in the data protection.

Dr. Sven Bugiel
Faculty

Our research explores the boundaries of what is possible in secure computation: What are the strongest possible security guarantees and strongest functionality we can achieve under the weakest possible assumptions?

Dr. Nico Döttling
Faculty

I see Cyber-Physical Systems as the new frontier of cybersecurity: my goal is to understand threats & defenses based on interactions between physical and digital systems, and to translate cybersecurity principles to engineered systems.

Dr. Nils Ole Tippenhauer
Faculty

Our society regularly faces devastating and largely anonymous cyber attacks. We explore automated, reliable, and accurate methods to identify the origin of cyber attacks -- an important step to hold anonymous attackers responsible for their action.

Prof. Dr. Christian Rossow
Faculty

Recent advances in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning offer great benefits to industry and society in general. While we are advancing the state of the art of future intelligent systems, we equally seek compliance with our expectations on security, privacy and safety.

Prof. Dr. Mario Fritz
Faculty

TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER
 

 

Transferring our research into applications and products is one of CISPA's core tasks. In doing so, we ensure that the economy as well as society at large can benefit from pioneering innovations and state-of-the-art technologies. We share our research results with the public through knowledge transfer, while also making them amenable to commercial utilization through technology transfer.

THE CISPA SPIRIT

CISPA is a great place to be for all our researchers and staff. At our research center, everybody is on first-name terms and (almost) everybody likes to play table soccer after work. And, needless to say, we all enjoy a little chitchat in the hallway.

And because nothing connects people like food and fun, we often come together for a lunch break, an after-work drink, and leisure activities.

Mingling with colleagues at one of our internal events
CISPA @ NeurIPS 2024 in Vancouver
CISPA's occasional pop-up canteen
CISPA's occasional pop-up canteen
We love to play foosball
Faculty Ben Stock @ CCS 2023 in Copenhagen
Alexander Dax @ USENIX 2023 in Anaheim
CISPA Summer Party featuring a traditional Saarland barbecue
Faculty Aurore Fass and Faculty Wouter Lueks @ CCS 2023 in Copenhagen
Sahar Abdelnabi @ CCS 2023 in Copenhagen
Taking the alpacas for a walk
Paper cakes are a must at CISPA
Sometimes your office might look like this
Faculty Katharina Krombholz and Lea Gröber
CISPA Faculty Trading Cards for exclusive hiring events

CISPA INSIGHTS FOR EVERYONE

 

PODCAST
 

That text was way too long and you couldn't bother reading it? In TL;DR, we talk to our researchers about their work on cybersecurity and AI, trying to ask them all the questions that our listeners will be asking themselves about, too.

Have fun listening!

 

VIDEO
 

Nothing moves more than movies. Which is why we produce our own videos to showcase our research topics but also CISPA life in general. Learn more about our people, our events, and the entire CISPA universe. Moving in so many ways! 

Have fun watching!

 

ZINE
 

CISPA Zine: composed of 'CISPA' and 'magazine', derived from the idea of the 'fanzine'. Fanzines are small and often folded magazines created by fans for fans. Published quarterly, the CISPA Zine is for all those interested in our center. 

Have fun reading!

 

NO COFFEE,
NO RESEARCH

No coffee, no ideas; no ideas, no research. Therefore: no coffee, no research! In this interview series, our researchers answer the most pressing questions about IT security and artificial intelligence over a hot cup of coffee

Have fun watching!

CISPA EVENTS

UPCOMING EVENTS IN 2025

CISPA
CYBER BRIEFING 

CISPA invites you to the first CISPA CYBER BRIEFING at the European School of Management and Technology (ESMT) in Berlin on March, 18.

CISPA
<3
IGB

Save the date! On June 21, 2025, it's that time again – CISPA invites the public to St. Ingbert to celebrate science and innovation!

 

 

CISPA CYSEC LAB

The CISPA Cysec Lab coordinates CISPA's student activities. We offer half and full day workshops for students from grade 7 onward, as well as further training for teachers and trainee teachers. We also offer regular working groups for particularly interested and talented students.

CISPA CYSEC LAB

The CISPA Cysec Lab coordinates CISPA's student activities. We offer half and full day workshops for students from grade 7 onward, as well as further training for teachers and trainee teachers. We also offer regular working groups for particularly interested and talented students.


PAST EVENT REPORT

Looking back on the Fem Future Forum

Hosting its first Fem Future Forum, the CISPA  highlighted the importance of female role models in the tech industry. Prominent speakers from the startup scene, business, and research spoke about their careers in different STEM professions. The discussions addressed gender-specific challenges and inequalities as much as forward-looking solutions. Students, researchers, and entrepreneurs from computer science, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence were invited to learn about startup strategies and business models while building valuable networks.