ASOC

Austrian universities must face up to the security challenges posed by real external threats on the one hand and regulatory requirements on the other. While many universities have excellent technical staff whose expertise has been gained over many years, for example in the course of setting up the ACO nets, strategic, university-wide measures are often difficult and fraught with obstacles due to the federal structures of the universities and the heterogeneous IT systems. In addition, universities are struggling to retain their outstanding technicians, as they are often successfully poached by large companies due to the prevailing shortage of skilled workers.

In this project, we want to provide universities with significant support on their way to a cross-institutional structure by designing a process model for necessary preparatory measures, developing relevant components based on innovative approaches such as Gaia-X and AI/machine learning, and designing accompanying measures such as cyber range training concepts and methods for self-evaluation of the maturity levels of universities. A central research question is how universities can detect threats and attacks in near real time from the enormous amount of log and metadata in order to initiate timely countermeasures and protective measures.

Another essential question is whether it is technically and organizationally feasible to develop comprehensive solutions that inevitably require deep insight into the IT systems of the organizations involved, while maintaining the digital sovereignty of Austria and Europe in this system-critical environment.