Exhibitors & Products

The project, led by Stuttgart-based asvin GmbH and endowed with a total of around 13.5 million euros in the second to fourth stages, will create a secure and resilient framework for the real-time exchange of cyber attack patterns and their risk management. The novel approach, based on graph models, offers significant advantages in cybersecurity management. It impressed the jury with its methodology for automating and prioritizing actions, mitigating risks and actively defending against cyber attacks.

Mirko Ross, founder and CEO of asvin GmbH, underlines the security policy significance of the initiative: “With MANTRA, we have an excellent opportunity to increase the sovereignty of the Federal Republic in the area of cyber security. Similar to the USA or Israel, Germany’s technological cybersecurity competence is now being significantly expanded. To this end, MANTRA creates a cybersecurity solution for critical infrastructures ‘made in Germany’, for Germany and Europe.”

Cyberagentur project manager Gerald Walther emphasized on the occasion of the award to asvin and two other consortia that the agency had received six “very good submissions” at the end of the first award phase: “The jury had looked very closely at the concepts and ultimately decided in favor of the three research groups with the most innovative approaches.” The three research consortia are now implementing their project concepts. They have one year to do so in phase two, which is starting now. At the end of this phase, the implementation will be evaluated. The Cyber Agency jury will then select two final participants who will advance to phase three.

For this evaluation, the expert jury consisting of members of the Cyber Agency and representatives of the overall societal security provision will again be available. It includes Prof. Dr. Christian Hummert, Research Director of the Cyber Agency, Prof. Dr. Tobias Eggendorfer, Head of the Secure Systems Department, Dr. André Müller, Research Officer Secure Systems, and Dr. Gerald Walther, Head of Critical Infrastructure Protection, and as external members Dr. Harald Niggemann, Cyber Security Strategist at the Federal Office for Information Security, and Lieutenant Colonel Christoph Kühn, Head of Department at the Cyber Security Operations Centre of the German Armed Forces.

Overall, the project “Existence-threatening risks from cyber and information space – high security in security-critical and defense-related scenarios” has a duration of five years. For questions about the research project and asvin’s cybersecurity products for context-based risk analysis and for prioritizing security measures, we are happy to arrange background discussions with Mirko Ross or with asvin’s chief technology officer Rohit Bohara.

About the Cyber Agency:

The Agency for Innovation in Cybersecurity GmbH (Cyber Agency) was founded in 2020 as a fully in-house federal company under the joint leadership of the Federal Ministry of Defense and the Federal Ministry of the Interior and for Home Affairs by the federal government. The goal is to take an application-strategy-oriented and interdepartmental view of internal and external security in the area of cybersecurity. Against this background, the work of the cyber agency is primarily aimed at the institutionalized implementation of highly innovative projects that are associated with a high risk with regard to the achievement of objectives, but at the same time can have a very high disruptive potential if successful. The Cyber Agency is headed by Prof. Dr. Christian Hummert as Research Director and Managing Director and Daniel Mayer as Commercial Director.

About asvin:

Headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, asvin GmbH currently has 22 employees. We develop solutions for software supply chain security. Our unique selling point is context-based risk analysis. This enables companies and government agencies to identify business-critical and operational risks from vulnerabilities in OT environments and prioritize protective measures. Users of asvin solutions receive real-time status data for their cybersecurity management and can act quickly and effectively – both in the event of damage, but above all proactively and with foresight. Thus, asvin supports the optimized use of resources in cyberspace and helps its customers to gain time for cyber tasks and to save costs.