SUNRISE endowed professorship for IoT Security

Projektlaufzeit: April 2^nd, 2024 – March 31^st, 2029

Since the development of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the associated - ever-increasing - networking, IT security has affected all industries and all areas of life. In the course of this development, the Master's degree program IT Security has been dealing with the topic of IoT security and awareness-building in non-industry domains for some time: On the one hand, the ELVIS Lab (Embedded Lab Vienna for IoT & Security) was successfully established at FH Campus Wien and supports students and lecturers from all disciplines, and on the other hand, a conference on the topic was developed that not only has a specialist audience as its target group, but is also interdisciplinary in nature (IT-S NOW!). The idea for the IoT Security endowed professorship was formed during the ELVIS project and was manifested and confirmed during the preliminary surveys for the PETE-S project.

As part of the project, IT security expertise is now to be developed in relation to devices (things) and their communication. An endowed professorship for network security has already been successfully implemented - this is now to be complemented by the "IoT Security" endowed professorship so that it can be integrated into other disciplines. IoT security not only requires in-depth knowledge in the field of IT security, but also in the field of embedded systems and, as a result, their interaction in conjunction with wireless protocols. The ELVIS Lab offers an excellent basis for this.

The focus is on the following topics:

• wireless (Bluetooth Low Energy, NFC)
• IoT pentesting
• programming of hardware security modules (HSM)
• cryptography on constrained devices

As part of the endowed professorship, these focal points will be integrated and expanded into the teaching of the Master's degree program IT Security in order to meet the current needs of the economy. The research part of the professorship will focus on the security aspects of the new Bluetooth Low Energy standard, as well as on the practical and theoretical evaluation of different HSM approaches in the IoT environment. The aim is to provide users with simple and transparent yet secure solutions for the practical use of IoT devices in everyday life.