Merlin Stottmeister, a bachelor's and master's graduate of The Hochschule Niederrhein, presented the results of his master's thesis on "Partial automation of search/aggregation for IT security information using threat intelligence information from the clearnet, deepweb and darknet" at the 19th German IT Security Congress of the German Federal Office for Information Security. He was given this opportunity because his thesis was nominated for the Best Student Award alongside two other papers out of a total of 170 submitted. Having already awarded the prize to two doctoral students at the Hochschule Niederrhein last year, this year's silver medal to Mr. Stottmeister is, as BSI Vice President Dr. Gerhard Schabhüser put it, further proof of the successful practical orientation in the field of cyber security at the Hochschule Niederrhein. Mr. Benedikt Bastin (Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn) also received the twice awarded second place for his work on "Comparison of multi-factor authentication methods". The Best Student Award went to Ms. Luise Dorenbusch from Meißen University of Applied Sciences for her work on "Trust Level Determination in Municipal Practice".
The German IT Security Congress is the largest national congress in which representatives from the German federal government, state governments, business and industry as well as renowned scientific institutions meet annually to define and discuss the state of the art in terms of increasing the resilience of IT systems and to set the course for future multidisciplinary research activities in the field of information security. Already on the first day of the congress, more than 9000 participants attended the congress.
In his thesis, Stottmeister developed a software prototype that largely automates the search and finding of IT vulnerability information. This gives IT security managers a time advantage in analyzing and responding to IT vulnerabilities that keep emerging. In addition, the software collects information about so-called leaks on the darknet. For example, whether cybercriminals are offering data for sale on special forums from an institution. The knowledge gained from the thesis as well as the prototype are a valuable building block in the field of cyber defense.
The thesis, which was nominated for the Best Student Award, was scientifically supervised by Prof. Dr. Treibert - head of the Clavis Institute for Information Security at the HN - and by Philipp Schütz - a doctoral student at Clavis. The practical partner for the topic is a cooperation partner of the Cyber Management Campus Mönchengladbach: Bechtle IT-Systemhaus Solingen GmbH. There, Mr. Stottmeister has implemented the software close to the application and is currently testing and further improving it in test positions as an IT security consultant.
