CISPA Technologietransfer

Our startups are hiring! Whether you’re a Finance Manager, Engineering Manager, or Full Cycle Sales Manager—our startups are looking for you to tackle strategic challenges and drive real impact. ➡️ Find out more about the jobs in the comments below. Project Manager OT InfraSec ✔️ Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, Business Information Systems, or a related field ✔️ Experience in B2B social media and community building ✔️ Some experience in project management, operations, the startup environment, or event organization Engineering Manager NetBird ✔️ 5+ years of experience in software engineering, with recent experience in a senior or leadership role ✔️ Proven experience managing and growing engineers ✔️ Strong project ownership: experience planning, prioritizing, and delivering projects in a fast-moving environment Full Cycle Sales Manager Detesia ✔️ At least 5 years of sales experience ✔️ Fluent in the tooling required for a serious sales operation ✔️ You have closed real B2B deals and carry a track record you can point to 📩 Apply now or share this post with your network! CISPA Helmholtz-Zentrum für Informationssicherheit

At CISPA, we believe, research excellence is the foundation of breakthrough innovation, and ultimately, successful technology transfer. Congratulations to Philipp Görz, team member at Fuzzware.io, on receiving a Distinguished Paper Award at FSE 2026! 🏆 Out of around 200 accepted papers, only 10 received this prestigious recognition, an outstanding achievement. Philipp's award-winning research on fuzz harness degradation highlights exactly what makes research-driven startups so powerful: they don't just build products, they actively advance the scientific state of the art. By contributing cutting-edge knowledge back to the cybersecurity research community, they strengthen both academia and industry. At CISPA, this is what technology transfer is all about. Startups like Fuzzware demonstrate how world-class research can evolve into innovative solutions while continuing to shape the future of cybersecurity through scientific excellence. Congratulations to Philipp and the entire Fuzzware team on this well-deserved recognition! 👏 CISPA Helmholtz-Zentrum für Informationssicherheit Tobias Scharnowski Simon Wörner

This week’s OpenAI and Hugging Face incident wasn't just another cybersecurity story.   It highlighted something much bigger: AI is no longer only writing code. It's increasingly capable of finding and exploiting security weaknesses at machine speed.   The challenge isn't simply "more vulnerabilities." It's that security teams need systems that understand context, prioritize real risks, and keep pace with AI-driven development.   “So the question for me became: If AI is accelerating software development, how can we build a security system that can keep up with that pace?” says Hossein Hajipour, former CISPA Founders Fellow and founder of Reware Labs, in our interview. He explains why traditional security tools are reaching their limits, how context-aware AI can detect threats more effectively, and why autonomous AI agents could fundamentally change secure software development. 👉 Read the full interview now. You can find the link in the comments. CISPA Helmholtz-Zentrum für Informationssicherheit

He grew up just across the Saarland border, taking apart old electronics in search of one thing: how things actually work. That same curiosity shaped Kevin Morio’s path into Computer Science. What fascinated him most was the moment when complexity stops being chaos and becomes structure — when a problem can suddenly be described in a clean, formal way. During his PhD, this way of thinking turned into something more concrete. He saw that his research could grow into a real solution with meaningful impact on people's lives, well beyond an academic result. From that emerged his startup idea for SpecMon: It builds on the fact that while security protocols can be proven correct on paper, the real-world implementations we rely on may still behave differently from their formal design. This creates a dangerous gap between verified security models and actual system behavior. SpecMon addresses this by continuously monitoring running security-critical software and checking its behavior against a precise formal specification, flagging or stopping deviations in real time. Rather than stay on a purely academic track, he set out to build a company, convinced his work could make a real difference in the systems people use every day. Through the CISPA Founders Fellowship, that transition becomes a supported journey from research insight to startup reality. What do you think: At what point does a research finding stop being an experiment — and start becoming something the world actually needs? CISPA Helmholtz-Zentrum für Informationssicherheit

Our startups are hiring! Whether you’re a Finance Manager, Engineering Manager, or Project Manager—our startups are looking for you to tackle strategic challenges and drive real impact. ➡️ Find out more about the jobs in the comments below. Engineering Manager at NetBird ✔️ 5+ years of experience in software engineering, with recent experience in a senior or leadership role ✔️ Proven experience managing and growing engineers ✔️ Strong project ownership: experience planning, prioritizing, and delivering projects in a fast-moving environment Partnerships Manager at Kertos ✔️Proven track record of building or playing a key role in shaping affiliate programs in the B2B SaaS sector ✔️Background in channel sales in a quota-carrying role and have many years of experience in generating pipeline through partners and closing deals ✔️Experience in the compliance, cybersecurity, or legal tech industry Business Development & Go-To-Market Consultant at #GuardSphere / Farah Shenawy ✔️Proven experience in business development, GTM, or product marketing ✔️Experience with industrial, OT, or B2B enterprise customers ✔️Effective communication with technical, commercial, and executive stakeholders Project Manager at OT InfraSec ✔️Completed studies in business administration, business informatics, or comparable field ✔️Strong organizational skills and a structured, self-responsible way of working ✔️Hands-on mentality: You don't wait for perfect processes but help build them up, enjoy responsibility, speed, and an environment with a lot of creative freedom 📩 Apply now or share this post with your network! CISPA Helmholtz-Zentrum für Informationssicherheit

As a CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security spin-off, we are very happy and thankful about the long-lasting research collaboration. A special thanks to Prof. Jilles Vreeken who supports QuantPi since day 1. "Where Do Agents Differ? Interpretable Rule Discovery for Performance Differences Across Models and Data"

Three days at #TDI2026 reinforced a message that came up in almost every conversation: cybersecurity is no longer a niche topic. It is becoming a prerequisite for resilience, competitiveness, and technological sovereignty. Bringing together four German incubators dedicated to IT security startups at a shared booth was an opportunity to make one thing visible: technological sovereignty is built through collaboration. 🤝 The CISPA Technology Transfer team coordinated the joint presence at TDI 2026 and helped showcase how research-driven entrepreneurship translates excellent science into real-world impact. 🚀 Throughout the event, industry leaders, policymakers, researchers, and founders shared a common ambition: Europe must actively shape its technological future. But innovation does not happen in isolation. It accelerates when different perspectives meet – from cutting-edge research and startup ideas to industrial requirements and real-world deployment. A big thank you to our partner incubators for the collaboration and the many inspiring discussions 🤗 Cube 5 | Creating Security, StartUpSecure | ATHENE, KIT-Gründerschmiede, CISPA Helmholtz-Zentrum für Informationssicherheit, RedMimicry GmbH, CyberTide, Cybervize, Alexander Busse, Raafat H, VISS, Alexandra von Dewitz, Jürgen Philippi 📹 im Video: Maximilian Von Lonski, Max Chechelev, Alexandra Hoffmann, Gustavo O., Stefan Steinberg

"We need ideas." Alexander Busse, Founder and CEO of Cybervize, looks around. In front of him sit people from research, startup support, industry and policymaking. This is not a traditional pitch session. No audience waiting to be convinced. Instead, a place full of people ready to think along. Using the tool of "crowd innovation" during the Demo Days “Secure & Connected” in Berlin, each startup brought along a real business challenge they are currently facing. After a short pitch, participants dove straight into the problem: understanding the challenge, gathering ideas, brainstorming solutions, discussing approaches and later presenting the outcomes in the plenary session. For Cybervize, the question was highly relevant: ➡️ "How might we turn early enterprise engagements into credible, referenceable proof points quickly, when NDAs, procurement and security reviews limit what we can show or name publicly?" ⬅️ Trust is one of the strongest growth drivers in cybersecurity. Yet the most valuable early customers are often large enterprises with lengthy procurement processes, extensive security reviews and strict confidentiality agreements. So how can startups create trust signals before customer logos can go public? ▫️Through anonymised case studies? ▫️Design partner programmes? ▫️Sector-specific references? What followed was exactly what makes formats like this so valuable: fresh perspectives, practical suggestions and ideas that are often hard to uncover in day-to-day startup life. CISPA was also involved in shaping the workshop format itself. Our colleague Alexandra Hoffmann joined one of the teams, CyberTide, as a workshop coach, helping to guide discussions, challenge assumptions and support the team in turning collective input into actionable ideas. More than 30 founding teams showcased solutions that have emerged from research in cybersecurity and communication technologies, demonstrating that excellent research and market readiness go hand in hand. As an incubator within the StartUpSecure programme, we support founding teams not only in developing breakthrough technologies, but also in tackling the questions that determine whether a promising idea can become a successful company. It was great being part of the #BMFTRDemoDays – thank you for creating spaces that remind us that sometimes the most valuable resource for a startup is not another slide deck, but a room full of people willing to work on a challenge together. VDI/VDE Innovation + Technik GmbH, Cube 5 | Creating Security, StartUpSecure | ATHENE, KIT-Gründerschmiede, KASTEL Security Research Labs, CISPA Helmholtz-Zentrum für Informationssicherheit

Dear community, Surely you have noticed the media coverage regarding CISPA over the past few days. We take the allegations that were made very seriously, since research security and the responsible handling of scientific findings are top priorities for CISPA. Therefore, we fully support the independent special audit ordered by our shareholders and will cooperate without restriction to ensure a thorough investigation. Please understand that we cannot comment on matters that are subject of the ongoing audit. During the special audit, we would still like to continue sharing our research and life at CISPA with you here. We will begin posting content on this channel in the coming days. Your CISPA team _____ Liebe Community, ihr habt sicher in den vergangenen Tagen die Berichterstattung über das CISPA wahrgenommen. Wir nehmen die erhobenen Vorwürfe sehr ernst, denn: Forschungssicherheit und der verantwortungsvolle Umgang mit wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnissen haben für das CISPA höchste Priorität. Wir unterstützen deshalb die von den Gesellschaftern angeordnete unabhängige Sonderprüfung vollumfänglich und werden bei der lückenlosen Aufklärung uneingeschränkt mitwirken. Bitte habt Verständnis, dass wir uns zu Inhalten, die Gegenstand dieser laufenden Prüfung sind, nicht äußern können. Auch während der Sonderprüfung wollen wir euch hier weiterhin an unserer Forschung und dem Leben am CISPA teilhaben lassen. In den kommenden Tagen werden wir diesen Kanal wieder füllen. Euer CISPA-Team

From research on the shelf to real-world cybersecurity impact: how Fuzzware.io, a spin-off from CISPA Helmholtz-Zentrum für Informationssicherheit, is uncovering hidden vulnerabilities in the systems we rely on every day. In a recent interview by the Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft, Co-Founder of Fuzzware Tobias Scharnowski talks about the journey from research to practice. And why embedded systems in vehicles, medical devices, and many other technologies today represent particularly attractive attack surfaces for cyberattacks. Fuzzware develops methods to systematically identify exactly these vulnerabilities. In doing so, theoretical security research becomes a concrete contribution to protecting digital systems in critical application domains. 👉 Read the interview: https://lnkd.in/eSTF-HUn