AIGIS Lab

Attacks on the IT systems of university and non-university research institutions are on the rise. At the same time, there is strong evidence that many of these organizations are inadequately protected against cyberattacks. Research institutions face particular challenges in this regard, as they consist of a large number of departments with diverse IT infrastructures. They foster an open culture in which, for example, researchers enjoy considerable freedom in carrying out their work and students are allowed to use their own devices. However, individual computers belonging to researchers and students may be compromised. It is therefore not sufficient to secure an entire system against external attacks, as there is no guarantee that security standards will be maintained “on the inside.” Furthermore, it must be possible to contain the spread of a breach via a compromised internal system. Zero-trust architectures have the potential to almost completely resolve this issue. In such an architecture, no subsystem relies on the trustworthiness of another involved system or of users—even those who appear to be legitimate.

The project “Real-World Laboratory for Modern Cybersecurity in Research Institutions” (AIGIS) will use two research institutions as examples to demonstrate what such a modern cybersecurity architecture might look like. To this end, the researchers are developing a requirements analysis for setting up an exemplary zero-trust architecture and evaluating it in a real-world lab. To this end, representative substructures—in the form of networks, central infrastructures, and various institutes—will first be selected at both research institutions and analyzed in terms of their requirements. Building on this, the researchers will develop an appropriate, modern cybersecurity architecture.

The entire project and the intended research results are geared toward application and transfer: Ideally, the installation of the zero-trust architecture will create a pioneering real-world laboratory. On this basis, more in-depth research activities can be conducted to create improved cybersecurity architectures for universities and non-university research institutions. The research results thus make an important contribution to raising the overall level of IT security and data protection in German research.

About AIGIS-Lab

The project’s consortium coordinator is Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. The project is led by Prof. Haya Schulmann, who holds a LOEWE Chair in Computer Science at GU.

The project has received 8.91 million euros in funding from the BMBF. The project will run from November 2022 to October 2026.