Collaborative projects

Despite remarkable growth over the last 35 years in both the theory and practice of cryptography, today's solutions do not remotely meet all the requirements that arise in new and next generation computing environments: (1) Current cryptography does not match all the necessary functional requirements for new and expected future applications. For example, there is no adequate protection of confidential data in the cloud, in particular in the long-term, as required to protect privacy. (2) Fundamental building blocks such as current digital signatures are threatened by future attacks, in particular through quantum computers. There are no reliable and well established alternatives. (3) Existing solutions lack sound implementations and integrations. (4) For users and developers who are not experts in cryptography, it is almost impossible to correctly apply cryptography.

The inadequacy of current cryptography is a major hindrance to the development of trust in present and future computing environments and thus the beneficial development of society and economy. The goal of the Collaborative Research Center CROSSING is therefore:

To provide cryptography-based security solutions enabling trust in new and next generation computing environments. The solutions will meet the efficiency and security requirements of the new environments and will have sound implementations. They will be easy to use for developers, administrators, and end users of IT, even if they are not cryptography experts.

In CROSSING over 65 researchers from complementary areas such as cryptography, software engineering, and usability will achieve this goal in a collaborative effort.

CROSSING receives funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG) as a Collaborative Research Center (SFB) since 2014.

Website CROSSING