Welcome to the Research Group SECUSO
Security • Usability • Society

The RFH Cologne organises the IT Security & Forensic Days for the second time. The aim is to increase the sensitivity for security in IT systems and to raise awareness of the primary topic. The event will include expert lectures, discussions and workshops on the topics of IT security, data protection and IT forensics. Benjamin Reinheimer will also hold a workshop on the subject of phishing and fraudulent messages. The audience, consisting of students, lecturers, alumni and experts from all sectors, will learn the essential rules for detecting phishing interactively and will be provided with support for its implementation in daily life.

Three new apps have been added to our group of Privacy-Friendly Apps. Among these apps are two new games. "2048" is a puzzle game, the goal of which is to reach the number 2048 by sliding the same numbers together. In our mobile version of a classic game "Minesweeper", one has to find all the mines on the playing field without triggering them. The third app “Finance Manager” can be used to monitor personal finances. As with the rest of privacy-friendly apps, the newly added apps are free and do not require any permissions that are not strictly necessary for their functionality. This means, that all of the three apps require no permissions. They furthermore contain no ads or user tracking mechanisms.

The International Joint Conference on Electronic Voting (E-Vote-ID) took place for the third time in Schloss Hofen in Bregenz, Austria. The conference hosted over 100 participants from five continents and provided a platform of talks and discussions among a variety of stakeholders, including academic researchers from different disciplines, practitioners and vendors. The pre-conference program included the PhD colloquium and demo session of voting systems.

Just in time for the European Cyber Security Month, we publish a new information flyer that helps you to choose privacy-friendlier apps for your iOS devices. This iOS-specific flyer is based on the flyer for Android devices, which has been evaluated in a user study, and is further developed based on the feedback of end users. The flyer is currently only available in German.