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.
The paper “Do (Not) Tell Me About My Insecurities: Assessing the Status Quo of Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure in Germany Amid New EU Cybersecurity Regulations” by Sebastian Neef, Cenk Schlunke, and Anne Hennig has been accepted for publication at the 2025 European Symposium on Usable Security (EuroUSEC 2025). Within a longitudinal study, the paper analyzed the adoption, challenges, and experiences of the 40 companies listed on Germany’s DAX (the country’s primary stock market index) with CVD programs. The adoption rates show a significant increase from 50% (2023) to over 90% (2025), with ten new CVD programs and 25 new security.txt files now available. Answers in the survey that accompanied the study, reveal that, for example, legal obligations (e.g., NIS2 and CRA) drive the adoption of CVD practices, but a lack of (human) resources and varying report quality are considered drawbacks. EuroUSEC 2025 will take place September 11 and 12, 2025 in Manchester, UK.
More about EuroUSECBenjamin Berens and Peter Mayer will again support the upcoming Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2026) as Associate Chairs (AC) for the 'Privacy & Security' subcommittee. Associate Chairs match papers and reviewers with the intent that experts review each paper. Submission deadline for full paper will be on September 11, 2025, until January 22, 2026, short paper in the form of extended abstract can be submitted. CHI 2026 will take place from April 23 to 17, 2026 in Barcelona, Spain.
More on the conferenceTwo papers by SECUSO have been accepted for publication at the Tenth International Joint Conference on Electronic Voting (E-Vote ID 2025). The paper “Voting Under Pressure: Perceptions of Counter-Strategies in Internet Voting” by Christina Frederikke Nissen, Tobias Hilt, Jurlind Budurushi, Melanie Volkamer, and Oksana Kulyk uses semi-structured interviews to examine how potential online voters in Germany and Denmark perceive and evaluate various measures to prevent voter coercion. The second paper, “Development and Expert Evaluation of an Informative Video concerning Verifiable Internet Voting” by Tobias Hilt, Florian Moser, Philipp Matheis, and Melanie Volkamer, describes the development and evaluation process of an informative video on the topic of online elections. E-Vote ID 2025 will take place from October 1-3 in Nancy, France.
MoreWe welcome Dr. Juraj Sikra, PhD as a new PostDoc in the SECUSO Team! Juraj received his doctorate in June 2025 at the University of Strathclyde StrathCyber Group (in assoc. with GCHQ’s NCSC) from improving cybercrime reporting in Scotland. Juraj’s original background is in clinical and criminal psychology as well as Human Resource Management (Learning and Development). During his PhD, Juraj employed a multidisciplinary approach to make viable recommendations for policy makers on how to influence the general population to report cybercrime. As a result, his research was covered by both national and international media. Within SECUSO, Juraj will be working on the protection of sport science data as well as with industry. Whilst he currently speaks only English and Slovakian, he looks forward to learning German and would be delighted to hear back from anyone interested in reaching out.
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