Foundation for Cyberdome: BSI and states forge digital defense alliance

Given the persistently tense threat situation in cyberspace, the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) is switching to attack mode in its defense: Together with the cooperative of public IT service providers (Govdigital), the agency is laying the foundation for the Cyberdome demanded by Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (CSU). According to BSI President Claudia Plattner, the goal is the "industrialization of cybersecurity."

Through expanded data sensor technology in the IT systems of ten federal states and their municipalities, anomalies will be detected in real-time in the future. According to the plan, this networking between the BSI and local Security Operations Centers (SOCs) will serve as an automated early warning system to ensure the operational capability of the state and administration against professional cyberattacks and to evaluate threat information across states.

The initiative announced on Wednesday marks the operational implementation of a strategy that Dobrindt has been pushing for months. In January, the CSU state group in the Bundestag also demanded "active cyber defense" and outlined the concept of a Cyberdome as an automated protective shield.

CSU wants to allow hackbacks

While the BSI is currently focusing on detection and resilience, the political appeals go further: The CSU and its minister want a legal basis for digital counter-offensives, so-called hackbacks. If German servers are attacked from abroad, security authorities should be able to actively disrupt the attackers' infrastructure. The currently initiated setup of the sensor technology infrastructure could lay the technical foundation for this vision of a resilient digital sovereignty.

The cooperation between the federal government and municipal service providers via Govdigital is intended to end the previous digital micro-states. By pooling forces, the actors aim to scale defense capabilities to keep pace with the speed of modern malware.

The project is considered one of the first concrete pillars of the Cyberdome, which is intended to technically and personally strengthen the national cyber defense center. This moves Germany away from purely reactive measures towards a proactive, but highly controversial defense strategy that views digital space as a central field of civil defense and aims to elevate the security of public infrastructure to an industrial level.

(vbr)