Hasso-Plattner-Institut
 

Winfried Karl

Winfried Karl is the head of the "Central Office for Information Technology in the Security Sector," which is barely a year old. In his keynote address at the 6th Conference for National Cyber Security at the Hasso Plattner Institute, he focused on the tasks that "ZITiS," as his agency is abbreviated, is to assume in the future. He sees it as a "service provider" for the other nearly 40 security agencies in Germany, which are facing "ever greater challenges" as a result of modern technologies. This situation is further exacerbated by the exponential growth of data volumes, the everyday use of professional encryption mechanisms and the ever-shorter development and utilization cycles of new technologies.

With its interdisciplinary team, ZITiS is primarily intended to bundle competencies and support the security authorities by providing strategy and method consulting - "often the authorities do not know among themselves what solutions exist," says Karl, describing the current situation. In addition, ZITiS wants to actively cluster industry with academic research as a central player. Its main areas of activity include digital forensics, which involves the "forensic exploitation of digital traces," telecommunications surveillance technology, crypto and Big Data analysis. An important directional decision at the time of its founding was to completely rebuild the agency and thus create a culture "that encourages innovative ideas," Karl said.