The new institute will be based at the University of Helsinki and located in the Helsinki Institute of Information Technology HIIT. Researchers from the Secure Systems research group at the Department of Computer Science of University of Helsinki, led by Professor N. Asokan, will drive the research in collaboration with experts from Intel and researchers from ICRI-SC at Technical University of Darmstadt.
– Mobile malware is becoming a severe risk on phones, tablets and other mobile devices. By connecting Intel’s industry insight with the leading research of the Helsinki IT security research community, we will define new usable paradigms to jointly reduce the risk of mobile malware, says Dr. Matthias Schunter, the Intel Principal Investigator for the Intel Institute for Collaborative Research for Secure.
The institute in Helsinki will focus on developing and strengthening techniques for platform security in mobile devices with a particular emphasis on the usability of those techniques.
– Our mission is to develop security and privacy solutions that are useful to ordinary users. That calls for designing technical solutions that are sufficiently secure but at the same time are also easy to use and inexpensive to deploy, says N. Asokan.
Professor Sasu Tarkoma heading the Networking and Services line at the Department has a good reason to be happy.
– This is a significant new opening for the Department in the mobile security area. System-level security and usability are key requirements for the next generation mobile devices. The joint research paves way for new user-friendly mobile solutions that reduce security risks also for companies.
Dean Keijo Hämäläinen from the Faculty of Science, soon to become Vice-Rector is enthusiastic about the collaboration, as well.
– This is an outstanding example of how international collaborative projects, based on solid expertise by our scientists promote the progress of society. Following our strategy we actively look for a dialogue between our high-quality research and the leading technology producers.
Initial work at the institute will be along three research themes: "Secure Open Access to Trusted Execution Environments", "Novel Applications of Platform Security" and "Malware Insights".
The institute in Helsinki began its operations on August 1, 2013. Intel and University of Helsinki announced their collaboration in Nice, October 22, 2013.