Secure Digital Transformation in Health Care (SeDiTraH)

Securing digital processes and infrastructures during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond

The COVID-19 epidemic has turned out to be one of the biggest challenges for society, economy and government in decades. In addressing this challenge, information and communication technology (ICT) plays a central role: It can help to break infection chains, improve the flow of information between public health offices, test laboratories, etc., and facilitate the sharing of research results within the medical community. At the same time, the accelerated application of ICT in the fight against the epidemic has introduced new risks regarding security and privacy, with disinformation campaigns in social media posing an additional threat.

In this research area, ATHENE addresses security and privacy aspects of digital solutions for the epidemics phase, e.g. by conducting security analyses of Corona contact tracing apps. Regarding the digital transformation of the health sector in the mid- and long-term, it contributes to the development of secure and trustworthy digital processes and infrastructures in close cooperation with medical experts and other relevant players in this sector. The projects aim at solutions that are secured against attacks against systems, data integrity and data confidentiality as well as designed to prevent privacy violations. Focus areas of our research and development are secure medical processes and infrastructures, security analyses and quality assurance of medical apps, and analyses in the field of “infodemics”.