The research group SECUSO (Security • Usability • Society) belongs to the Institute of Applied Informatics and Formal Description Methods (AIFB) of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). The group was founded in 2011 by Prof. Dr. Melanie Volkamer at the TU Darmstadt. SECUSO moved to the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology at the beginning of 2018. SECUSO is a member of Kastel, K-CIST and KD²Lab.

Juraj Sikra supports EICC as PC member (26-11-2025)

Juraj Sikra is on the program committee for European Interdisciplinary Cybersecurity Conference which takes place in Darmstadt, Germany, from June 17-18, 2026. The call for papers for this year’s European Interdisciplinary Cybersecurity Conference is published. Current contributions from the relevant area must submit their work by January 18, 2026 (AoE). EICC 2026 proceedings will be published by Springer Nature in the Communications in Computer and Information Science (CCIS) series.

Read the CfP
SECUSO student in the final of the CAST IT Security Award (20-11-2025)

Our student Mario Gemov has made it to the final of the CAST IT Security Award 2025 for outstanding theses in the field of IT security. The topic of his bachelor's thesis was “Usability analysis of mail clients with regard to S/MIME.” The final round of the CAST Sponsorship Award, which offers prize money totaling up to €4,000, will take place on December 4, 2025, at the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology (SIT) in Darmstadt.

Further information
Poster accepted at DiTraRe Symposium (14-11-2025)

Two posters by and with SECUSO members involved will be presented at this year's DiTraRe Symposium 2025: The poster "Risks Posed by Wearables to Data Protection in Sports Science as Identified by User Studies" by Juraj Sikra presents a systematic literature review for the urgent novel topic of protecting sensitive data collected during sports science research with wearables. The poster for the paper "A Short Commentary On: 'Would John Dewey wear a Fitbit? A pragmatist analysis of self-tracking technologies’ impact on habit formation'" by Juraj Sikra, Diana Dimitrova, and Lea Sophie Singson presents the results of the work of three subject matter experts which followed an individual textual analysis and inter-subjective reflection methodology to write a commentary on a philosophical paper. The DiTraRe Symposium 2025 will take place December 2-3, 2025 in Karlsruhe, Germany.

About the event
Melanie Volkamer on security requirements for Internet elections (06-11-2025)

On January 20, 2026, Prof. Melanie Volkamer will speak at the symposium "Update für Personalrätinnen und Personalräte" (Update for Staff Council Members), organized by the Bavarian Academy for Administrative Management, about security requirements for digital tools for Internet elections and voting. This topic is particularly relevant for staff representatives, who need to have an informed opinion on the subject of Internet elections and voting and to better understand which issues should be clarified with manufacturers of Internet voting systems before they are used.

Further information