Bun­des­amt für sicher­heit in der Infor­ma­ti­ons­tech­nik (BSI)

As the natio­nal cyber secu­ri­ty aut­ho­ri­ty the Bun­des­amt für Sicher­heit in der Infor­ma­ti­ons­tech­nik (BSI) is respon­si­ble for digi­tal infor­ma­ti­on secu­ri­ty for the govern­ment, busi­nesses, and socie­ty through pre­ven­ti­on, detec­tion, and reac­tion. The BSI is the fede­ral cyber secu­ri­ty agen­cy and the chief archi­tect of secu­re digi­ta­li­sa­ti­on in Ger­ma­ny. Sin­ce its foun­da­ti­on in 1991 the BSI has deve­lo­ped into a cross-depart­ment­al com­pe­tence cent­re for infor­ma­ti­on secu­ri­ty issues with tech­ni­cal exper­ti­se reco­g­nis­ed natio­nal­ly and inter­na­tio­nal­ly. The inte­gra­ted value chain of the BSI ran­ges from defence and ana­ly­sis of cyber­at­tacks through con­sul­ting and cer­ti­fi­ca­ti­on to the deve­lo­p­ment of secu­ri­ty recom­men­da­ti­ons, best prac­ti­ces, and stan­dards. As the cen­tral cer­ti­fi­ca­ti­on and aut­ho­ri­sa­ti­on body in Ger­ma­ny, the BSI assu­mes respon­si­bi­li­ty in this area too. 

The BSI also focu­ses on the defence against cyber­at­tacks enab­led by new, dis­rup­ti­ve tech­no­lo­gies such as arti­fi­ci­al intel­li­gence or Quan­tum Tech­no­lo­gies. Quan­tum Com­pu­ters are a serious thre­at to the public-key cryp­to­gra­phy used today. The focus of BSI is deve­lo­ping and stan­dar­di­sing quan­tum com­pu­ter resistant alter­na­ti­ves with a distinc­tion bet­ween Post Quan­tum Cryp­to­gra­phy (PQC) and Quan­tum Cryp­to­gra­phy. The BSI com­mis­sio­ned rese­ar­chers from Uni­ver­si­tät des Saar­lan­des (UdS) and Flo­ri­da Atlan­tic Uni­ver­si­ty (FAU) to con­duct a stu­dy that pro­du­ced a meaningful and relia­ble assess­ment of the sta­te of deve­lo­p­ment of Quan­tum Com­pu­ters. 

BSI recom­men­da­ti­ons
In Decem­ber 2021 BSI published the docu­ment “Quan­tum-safe cryp­to­gra­phy – fun­da­men­tals, cur­rent deve­lo­p­ments and recom­men­da­ti­ons”. This publi­ca­ti­on updates BSI’s initi­al recom­men­da­ti­ons “Migra­ti­on to Post Quan­tum Cryp­to­gra­phy” published in April 2020. Moreo­ver, the BSI recom­mends within the Tech­ni­cal Gui­de­line BSI TR-02102–1 two quan­tum com­pu­ter resistant methods for key agree­ment and sta­teful hash-based signa­tu­re sche­mes. 

SQuaD Pro­ject
The BSI coor­di­na­tes the umbrel­la pro­ject SQuaD in clo­se coope­ra­ti­on with the Phy­si­ka­lisch-Tech­ni­sche Bun­des­an­stalt (PTB).