Host: Centre for IT Security (University of Passau)
Hybrid Format: in-person and online
Venue: IT-Centre Building (ITZ), Room 017, Innstraße 43, 94032 Passau
Date: Tuesday, 9 December 2025
The workshop will review some pressing and very timely issues and challenges concerning security that should be of concern not only for Europe and European players, but also beyond. Doing so it tries to explore common themes for collaboration between Europe and the Indo-Pacific.
Drone Threats and Swarm Warfare: Europe’s Next Security Challenge
In recent months, Europe has witnessed a surge in unauthorised drone incursions that disrupted airports and overflew military sites, exposing critical security gaps. These incidents, widely seen as part of hybrid warfare campaigns, highlight how state and non-state actors can exploit drones to sow instability. Meanwhile, across the Indo-Pacific, major powers are expanding their drone arsenals and developing swarm capabilities, foreshadowing future battlefields where coordinated drones could overwhelm traditional defences.
This talk examines the geopolitical implications of these trends, highlighting Europe’s policy and strategic capability gaps in countering such threats and assessing the international cooperation required to enhance resilience.
Immediate threats to digital connectivity infrastructures
The talk will sample immediate security threats to digital connectivity infrastructures including those to submarine communication cables and mobile infrastructures, and potential mitigation measures that could include satellite or avionic networks to divert traffic from disrupted undersea cables, and installing atomic clocks for the synchronisation of the mobile networks along the Eastern borders of the EU and the use of more interference resistant RF waveforms. It will expose some critical infrastructures in which both connectivity and security are essential seeking to find common and shared interest between Europe and the Indo-Pacific.
To be sensed or not to be sensed ‒ that’s the question: Integrated Sensing and Communications caught between drone detection and mass surveillance
One of the envisioned features of 6G mobile networks is radar sensing. Integrating the sensing of objects (including human beings) as well as the environment in general into the telecommunication infrastructure as a general ubiquitous feature has severe security and privacy implications. The sensing does not only affect users of the systems but also bystanders who are not users of the system but just part of the environment.
This talk will give an overview of the technological concepts beyond Joint Communication and Sensing (JCAS) and the envisioned use cases. It will illustrate certain privacy and security risks associated with the deployment of JCAS and propose concepts which should be implemented in the next generation mobile networks to mitigate the sensing related risks. The talk concludes with an overview of open research challenges related to security and privacy in JCAS.
International IT-Security Standardisation - Too Slow in Today's Critical Times?
Information security had previously benefitted from standardisation happening at a global scale, e.g. due to a widespread use of interoperable IT-Security solutions like encryption. But is the global standardisation process the right process to follow in times of critical global tensions ?
The talk will review international standardisation processes within ISO or CEN-CLC and discuss how the consensus-building might appear time wastingly slow and, thus, deter industry, universities, and society as a whole from participation. However, the talk will highlight that it is through this continued, prolonged, and tedious process and the participation of many devoted experts that non-benign activities and one-sided dominance are detected, prevented or rectified.
Attendance is limited. Please send an email to event.sectarget@digsec.de to register. The email should include:
Thank you.
