European Institute for System Security (EISS)

The European Institute for System Security (EISS) was founded in 1988 by Prof. Dr. Dr. Thomas Beth and is thus one of the oldest institutes for information security in the academic field in Germany.

The goal of EISS is to develop innovative solutions that provide security in increasingly complex IT applications. The most important task is the design of security protocols from the abstract description up to a prototypical realization. For this it is necessary to always consider the entire application. Current and future threats must be identified, and formal models and mathematical proofs must support the entire design process.

Important results of the work at EISS include the first chip card-based access protection to a computer network or one of the first public key cryptography protocols with key management, as well as the very early implementation and use of a firewall computer. All these techniques are now standard. Recent results include the first formal security models that support a modular design and take into account threats such as blackmail or protocol abort, the best current design of special hardware for breaking the RSA method, and practical suggestions such as increasing the security of digital signatures with camera phones. The results of EISS are documented by numerous prototypes, books and about 200 publications in journals and at peer-reviewed conferences.

Since 1988, EISS has been in contact with more than 20 companies. In addition, EISS has acted in an advisory capacity for the Ministry of the Interior of the State of Baden-Württemberg and the German Bundestag.

The vision behind the work at EISS is to develop trustworthy applications that can be used without any problems despite the increasing threat to modern IT systems and infrastructures.