Theme 1 – Trustworthy Critical Systems for the Connected World

Geopolitical crises and hybrid warfare will increasingly lead to cyberattacks on systems, such as digitalized critical infrastructures or democratic processes.

Therefore, Theme 1 has set itself the objective of developing and evaluating tangible security solutions in the KASTEL Security Laboratories for Energy and Production.

Another objective is to strengthen the structure of society by fighting disinformation, by developing improved methods for privacy and anonymity in communication networks, and by substantially advancing a modular approach for distributed information systems where the architecture can tolerate untrusted components.

Protecting critical infrastructures requires a holistic understanding of the physical consequences of cyberattacks. Therefore, Theme 1 faces the following scientific challenges:

• Develop systematic methods for risk analysis, mitigation, testing, and security assessment of complex systems.

• Investigate anonymity and privacy under large-scale surveillance (big tech, foreign governments, 6G sensors).

• Address disinformation and security of digital processes like online voting; existing standards (e.g., C2PA) lack anonymization capabilities.

• Create architectures that offer quantifiable security even with untrusted hardware, strengthening Europe’s digital sovereignity.

The approach of Topic TruST is most exemplified by the Signature Project “Scalable and Quantifiable Security for the Energy System of the Future”.