The “Elvis” project aims to raise awareness of the security risks of the Internet of Things

Vienna (A) The Internet of Things (IoT) connects more and more everyday things, devices, and machines. Communication is over IP network. However, this is associated with security risks that neither experts nor users are sufficiently aware of.

Therefore, researchers at the Competence Center for IT Security at FH Campus Wien have created an IoT security lab over the past three years and developed security awareness offerings for students and educators. The research project “Elvis” was funded by the City of Vienna – MA 23.

Sylvie Schmidt, project manager and IT security expert at FH Campus Wien, says of the success of “Elvis”: “The interest in our offerings has exceeded my expectations many times”, of the success of “Elvis”: “The motivation for dealing with IoT security – handling it is unimpressively high.” Normal, especially among students. ”

The consulting and testing offer at “Embedded Lab Vienna for IoT & Security”, the full name of the project, is not only used in the context of teaching: “More and more teachers and students are also simply coming out of personal interest,” says Schmidt.

Internet of Things Security Lab
The aim of the “Elvis” project funded by the City of Vienna – MA 23 was to create more awareness of IoT security among students and educators at FH Campus Wien. The topic should be anchored in the teaching – also in an interdisciplinary manner – and a sustainable advisory service on IoT security issues should be established at the university. With support from Cognosec GmbH, an IoT security lab has been established over the past three years, where students and lecturers can obtain advice and borrow devices for their security tests.

“We don’t fix security issues in the IoT Security Lab,” explains Sylvie Schmidt, how Elvis works in practice. “We want to find security holes and vulnerabilities and thus create awareness of the security risks of the Internet of Things.”

There are currently over 1000 devices available for security testing. The offer ranges from smart home devices and WiFi routers to pentesting devices and IoT development.

Courses wiki
Silvie Schmidt and her team provide advice on IoT security topics, project and thesis support, and have developed their own set of training courses as part of the “Elvis” project.

This is now permanently implemented at FH Campus Wien in technological courses for Applied Electronics, Clinical Engineering, Computer Science, Digital Communications, Electronic Systems Engineering, Health Aid Engineering, and High Technology Manufacturing and is also used in an interdisciplinary manner, for example in the field of Bioinformatics. Students can apply their theoretically acquired knowledge in practice to real devices in the IoT Security Lab and deepen it further.