ProSBAcT Unites Identeco and StartUp Secure in Battle Against Account Takeovers

Identeco launches with ProSBAcT! From the first of June 2023 ProSBAacT, a joint project of Identeco and the funding initiative StartUp Secure of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research will run. At this point, we would like to report briefly on what we plan to do with ProSBAcT and how we benefit from working with ProSBAcT.

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For our research project ProSBAcT we have received a one-year grant from the research initiative “StartUp Secure” of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The project started on 1 June 2023. At this point, we would therefore like to give an outlook on our collaboration with StartUp Secure and the funded project ProSBAcT.

StartUp Secure

StartUp Secure is a research initiative of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research . Its goal is to bring creative and innovative ideas from IT security out of the universities and industry and to bring them quickly into application. To this end, start-up incubators have been set up at the competence centres for IT security research CISPA in Saarbrücken, ATHENE in Darmstadt, KASTEL in Karlsruhe and at the Ruhr University in Bochum. At the beginning of StartUp Secure there is a promising research idea and a research team that wants to implement this idea. The incubators and competence centers provide support through workshops, networking events and much more.

StartUp Secure & Identeco

As a spin-off of the University of Bonn, we at Identeco have an inherent enthusiasm for research and are always interested in scientifically accompanying and validating the methods already we are already using in order to better meet the challenges of changing security situations and new technologies. That’s why we were immediately thrilled when we were proposed for StartUp Secure funding - it has given us the opportunity to bring new ideas to application more quickly.

We are very lucky to be able to work with the national research centre for applied cyber security ATHENE in Darmstadt. ATHENE supports us, our project ProSBAcT and other StartUp Secure projects through numerous workshops, networking events and coaching sessions with excellent trainers from all over the world. All kinds of topics are discussed, from legal issues to marketing strategies.

ProSBAcT

The joint project of StartUp Secure and Identeco is called ProSBAcT. ProSBAcT stands for “Proaktiver Schutz von Benutzerkonten durch Account Takeover” (proactive protection of user accounts through account takeover). In ProSBAcT, solutions are to be found to further improve the protection of user accounts, with the aim of increasing the security of companies and online services against account takeover attacks by hackers. Since platforms are responsible for the security of their user accounts, ProSBAcT is researching and developing methods to continuously match access data with an up-to-date database of stolen passwords. This method can actively prevent users from using already corrupted passwords. The database is managed in compliance with data protection regulations by storing the access data in encrypted and anonymized form. An analysis of the access data only takes place if the account is already known to the platform operator. This allows the platforms to take a proactive approach to account security. In this way, unauthorized access to the systems is prevented without triggering false alarms. With ProSBAcT, we at Identeco have the opportunity to further validate the current processes, to have them scientifically accompanied, to develop new ideas and to bring them into application.

Conclusion

We are very happy to be able to carry out another exciting project with ProSBAcT. The funding from the BMBF’s StartUp Secure enables us to continue to validate our existing processes scientifically and to bring new ideas into application. In addition, the workshops and networking events of ATHENE are a great addition to our work and allow us to exchange ideas with other young companies from the IT security sector. We are looking forward to the remaining time.