Some members from the the SECUSO research group are part of the “Digital Transformation of Research” (DiTraRe) project. At this Leibniz ScienceCampus, researchers from KIT and FIZ Karlsruhe (Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure) are investigating how digital tools influence their daily work. The project focuses on four different areas: “Protected Data Spaces”, “Smart Data Acquisition,” “AI-Based Knowledge Realms,” and “Publication Cultures.” Prof. Melanie Volkamer, SECUSO, heads the “Protected Data Spaces” cluster, which evaluates which data categories can be reused for research purposes and proposes legal, ethical, and technical solutions that take into account different levels of data sensitivity. If you would like to learn more about DiTraRe, subscribe to the DiTraRe newsletter!

On Monday, July 14, 2025, Mr. Laurent Vatrin, deputy mayor and councilor of the Métropole Grand Nancy, visited the SECUSO research group. The visit was part of the German-French talks between Karlsruhe and Nancy. Dr. Benjamin Berens presented our latest research including SECUSO’s work in the field of security awareness through the NoPhish concept. The broader context of the discussions centered around the topic of digital sovereignty and strategies for achieving and maintaining it in the long term.

A paper by SECUSO has been accepted for publication at the 11th Workshop on Usable Security and Privacy at the conference Mensch und Computer (MuC 2025). "`It sounds like automation´ - Towards Users' Understanding of Adaptive Systems" by Anne Hennig, Mattia Mossano, Lukas Aldag, Maxime Veit, and Melanie Volkamer investigated how users understand IT-based Adaptive Systems (ITbAS), and which risks they associate with their use (if any). The paper founds that, even though 72.58% of the participants heard of ITbAS, only 56.5% could define them. Further, the examples the participants provided partially suggest a lack of knowledge about the full potential of ITbAS in their everyday lives. MuC 2025 will take place from August 31 to September 3, 2025 in Chemnitz, Germany.

The "Denkwerkstatt" on November 14 and 15, 2025, in Berlin marks the start of a new cycle in the “Dialog für Cybersicherheit.” At the annual event, ideas, topics, questions, and visions for cybersecurity across society will be shared with the BSI and committed individuals from civil society, culture and media, science, business, and government in a participatory format. Further, ideas for new workstreams - topics that interested representatives of various stakeholder groups will work on in the cycle following the "Denkwerkstatt" - will be presented and selected. The deadline for submitting idea sketches for this year’s „Denkwerstatt" is August 31, 2025. A virtual community meeting will take place on August 14, 2025, where questions about the template, the selection criteria, and the process from submission to voting will be answered. SECUSO itself has participated in workstreams in recent years. Since November 2024, Anne Hennig supports the "Dialogkomitee" of the "Dialog für Cybersicherheit" as part of the stakeholder group Sciene.