CloudProtect

Motivation

Protecting software, digital artifacts, and other intellectual assets is becoming an ever more pressing challenge in an era characterized by more and more intricately connected devices.

The constant progress of industrial automation calls for more robust protections for machine operating software, configuration data, and digital designs.

Objectives and Approach

The CloudProtect project will design and implement a solution not yet available in the market that a) provides software protection and licensing as a global high-availability cloud service, b) includes cutting-edge security technology and cryptographic protocols; and c) operates on the basis of a proven commercially viable business model. On top of the technological work, one focus of the project will therefore lie on exploring and subsequently verifying the needs of potential users of the service.

Innovations and Prospects

The cryptographic keys and complex computations needed to protect software are provided almost completely via the cloud-based CloudProtect service, marking a step away from the current preference for local, ‘desktop’ solutions. Protected applications connect with the cloud service to check whether they can be executed in terms of the required rights and the relevant conditions. This gives software makers very granular controls over the legitimate use of their products. On a longer-term, it would put in place the technological basis for the global protection of industrial software Made in Germany. CloudProtect will also produce meaningful insights into the commercially viable provision of IT security solutions via cloud platforms.