Project partner

On this site the project partner of VOGUE are described and presented with their professional areas. Under the URL address of the institutes and companies further references can be found.

The company DECOIT GmbH & Co. KG (http://www.decoit.de/) is an IT competence partner to work out efficient technical solutions for their customers. Business processes and communication will be optimised in each project additionally. The company creates new IT solutions and implement them. This work will be done in close collaboration with their customers. If IT products are missing on the market, DECOIT will find out own solutions and develop them. Therefore, in cooperation with national and international partners DECOIT is able to realise different IT projects, successfully.

The professional area of the company includes:

Definition of company strategies regarding evaluation and assessment of the market for know-how setup of their enterprise customers.
Assessment of products independent from vendor or manufacturer for the development of efficient IT solutions.
Technological consulting of companies with own know-how for holistic solutions. That includes consulting from a basis concept till a customer requirement specification. That is necessary to implement new IT solutions without problems into enterprise networks.
Development of own IT solutions for creating added value for the customers.
Software development of own solutions in the area of E-Business, E-Commerce (B2B, B2C), and Networking for own niches.
Research and development projects to increase own know-how, create new products, and find new innovative partners.

The DECOIT GmbH & Co. KG has branch independent customers from the small and medium enterprise (SME) market. Large scale enterprises will be supported by new IT concepts (e.g. IT security concepts). SME companies get new concepts, implementations, and continuous IT support. Therefore, DECOIT GmbH & Co. KG is an full-service provider for flexible and secure solutions. Based on open source software mainly, the company develop new software products. In VOGUE, the company is for the coordination of the whole project responsible. Additionally, DECOIT is an industrial development partner, which will work in assessment, conception, development, and implementation within the project. As vendor of IT security solutions, the company is very interested in further development, use, and marketing of the VOGUE products.

NCP engineering GmbH (http://www.ncp-e.com/) was founded in 1986 and has its headquarters in Nuremberg. The company develops software for high security data transfer over public networks, LANs and the Internet. Core skills are: IP-routing, VPN-technologies, strong authentication, network access control (NAC), PKI certificate handling, identity and access management as well as encoding and firewall technology.

The company also offers an entire product portfolio for the operation of integrated VPN solutions, also known as "Next Generation Network Access Technology", with the aim to provide "Secure Communications". All software components are universal and compatible which guarantees data transfer to any remote access environment and the integration into already existing IT environments, i.e. even functionality with VPN gateways by other manufacturers. The integrated communication as well as automatic safety features makes the software easy to use and provide comprehensive protection of company networks against hacker attacks and industrial and economic espionage.

Intuitive user navigation is of utmost importance as this not only helps users to operate the software but also contributes to cost savings as there is less need for helpdesk intervention. NCP also takes a lot of care that the software is platform independent. Thus, the clients are available for Linux and Microsoft's mobile systems (Windows CE up to Windows Mobile 6.1, including Smartphone Edition) as well as Symbian (as of 3rd edition) in addition to standard Windows products (Windows 2000 to Windows 7 (XP/Vista/7 also in 64bit)). A comprehensive management system for the aforementioned components complement NCP's VPN portfolio.
The software has also been tested by BSI and was classified as secure as part of a project relevant application recommendation. NCP software is also used as part of BSI's SiMKo (secure mobile communication) project on Smartphones with the Windows Mobile operating system. This reflects the experience and skills in the VPN sector as well as specifically in secure mobile communication.

By the same token, with national and international marketing, NCP collaborates with technology and OEM partners, as well as sales via system houses, distributors and resellers. Large and intermediate-sized industrial enterprises of all economic sectors, banks, insurers and public authorities are all in our circle of customers.

NCP provides its own IT security components (VPN, firewall) and is interested in new trusted-computing approaches to secure its solutions. The aim is to participate actively in developments and integration and to evaluate the use to strengthen the company's products. The already existing marketing platform can then later also be used for VOGUE.

OTARIS Interactive Services GmbH (www.otaris.de) is specialized in mobile services, IT security, business intelligence and software development. OTARIS develops interactive client and web based solutions for improving enterprise communications and business processes.

OTARIS is a full service technology partner for companies using mobile services in the communication with their customers or employees. For many years OTARIS developed and marketed own solutions for mobile services and became leading to extensive experience in application development of various smartphone platforms (Symbian, BlackBerry, J2ME, Windows Mobile, Android, iPhone).

Besides the development of solutions OTARIS analyzes security issues of various operating systems and value added services. The cooperation spectrum ranges from consulting over supporting projects to remittance work and complete takeover of the operation of specific mobile and interactive communication services. OTARIS customers include companies in telecommunications, market research and healthcare.

Since 2008, OTARIS responsibility as the northern location of the association TeleTrust Germany is to support as local contact and coordinator of TeleTrust the cooperation with established regional networks. The nonprofit alliance TeleTrusT Germany was founded in 1989 to create a reliable framework for the deployment of trusted information and communication technologies. TeleTrusT rapidly developed into a well-known competencenetwork for IT security, whose voice is heard in Germany and Europe. Today TeleTrusT represents more than 90 members from industry, academia and research as well as public institutions.

The Mobile Research Center - MRC (www.mrc-bremen.de) offers services, know-how and technology transfer for mobile working and business processes for enterprises which develop, integrate and use mobile solutions/applications. Areas of interest are logistics, production, avionics und aerospace, health care industry and e-entertainment.

The MRC has two central parts:

An interdisciplinary research cluster of universities located in the state of Bremen
A demo center, which presents mobile technologies

The research cluster currently consists of 24 research groups with in total 140 researchers, e.g., from the TZI of the Universität Bremen (TZI) and the Institute of Informatics and Automation of the Bremen University of Applied Sciences (IIA). The MRC was partner in various R&D projects (BMBF, BMWi, and in the state of Bremen). In particular, the research groups are involved in the BMBF project FIDeS, which aims at developing an early warning and intrusion detection system based on AI methods. Furthermore, the MRC was partner in the project SIMOIT which was funded by the state of Bremen and aimed at developing authentication methods based on Trusted Network Connect (TNC). In the BMWi-funded project SiWear, we developed security concepts for wearable computing adapting the BSI baseline protection manual for security engineering.

Within VOGUE, the tasks of the MRC range from the analysis of security-critical processes over the implementation of single components to testing of security-critical functionality. As a research cluster, there is the opportunity to utilize the results of various R&D projects in the areas "Mobile applications" and "IT security".

The Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology SIT (http://www.sit.fraunhofer.de) is the leading expert for IT Security and develops solutions for immediate use, tailored to the customer's needs. Over one hundred highly qualified employees covering all areas of IT security make such customized services possible. The staff constitutes the competency foundation for cross-technological services at the highest level. The Fraunhofer Institute SIT is active in projects for companies from all kinds of industries. Numerous successful projects carried out with international partners are the resounding proof for trustful and reliable cooperation.

The staff's expertise forms the basis on which the competencies of Fraunhofer SIT are built, complemented by cooperative activities with Universities, Universities of Applied Sciences and Fraunhofer Institutes or other partners if required. The diversified technological know-how (RFID, UMTS, PKI, Smartcards, 3GSM, biometrics, etc.) enables SIT to review, integrate and manage security. Combining these methodical competencies in applied research is unique not only in Europe but worldwide. Professional project management and vigorous quality control guarantee the best of results.

Fraunhofer SIT is not only proficient in the techniques and methods but also has all the necessary equipment and tools to specify, analyse, verify and valididate IT based systems. The staff can thus perform practical tests to review a system's security, simulate the security features by using appropriate software and suitably visualise the reviewed system's security characteristics. Fraunhofer SIT has extensive knowledge about the latest security technologies and the security services of current systems and products (including operating systems, applications, protocols). Numerous projects document the Institute's immense experience in implementing security technologies into diverse application contexts.

A financed formal analysis of the TPMs for BSI and the collaboration on the standards of TCG has introduced the Fraunhofer SIT to a wide special audience particularly