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Connecting traces, securing evidence: strengthening the preservation of evidence
Research program "Forensic Digital Copies" goes out to tender
The Agentur für Innovation in der Cybersicherheit GmbH (Cyberagentur) is launching the call for proposals for the research program "Forensic Digital Copies" on xx May 2025. The aim is to develop a universal data format for analogue and digital traces and to research new methods for automated trace correlation and extracting new information. Applicants can submit their concepts as part of an award procedure and thus lay the foundation for the forensics of the future.
The "Forensic Digital Copies" research program addresses one of the central challenges of modern investigative work in order to efficiently combine previously isolated analogue and digital evidence - for example from telecommunications surveillance and smartphone forensics. The aim is to obtain predictions about specific content, e.g. based on chat histories with individual contacts, and specific metadata (e.g. timestamps and location data) on a smartphone that has not yet been forensically analysed. Among other things, this data is highly relevant if smartphones are difficult to forensically secure using security measures or have been manipulated before being secured. To this end, new methods are to be researched that compare divergent data sets, (semi-)automatically validate consistent traces and thus place investigations on a more stable footing. Another focus is on the possibility of calculating new criminally relevant clues from existing analogue and digital traces, for example reconstructing a gait pattern from an originally analogue shoe print and a digital video recording or evaluating movement data more precisely.
The field of application of the research program is clearly defined: It is aimed at authorities and organisations with security tasks (BOS) and aims to sustainably strengthen the preservation of evidence in investigations. The results should contribute both to the defence against accusations of manipulation and to the more efficient collection of evidence. This represents a return to the technical diligence of classic forensics in the guise of modern technologies.
The research program is planned in two stages and will be designed as a PCP (Pre-Commercial Procurement) process. Firstly, an interoperable data format will be developed. In a second step, exemplary procedures for the recalculation and validation of information will be developed and tested. Here great importance is attached to comprehensible, not exclusively AI-based methods. Strategies based on classic decision trees, statistical methods or algorithmic approaches will also be considered. Aim is a comprehensive performance comparison that systematically compares both novel and proven technologies and comprehensibly tests their suitability for forensic applications. The Cyberagentur is thus consciously drawing a lesson from current debates on the transparency and traceability of algorithmic procedures.
Til Weißflog, program manager and expert for forensic digitisation at the Cyberagentur, sees the "Forensic Digital Copies" research program as "the foundation for forensic methods that transition traditional ways of preserving evidence into the digital age – making them robust, traceable and admissible in court. After all, analogue and digital evidence together have long shaped the reality of modern investigations. Yet without common standards and reliable, verifiable correlation techniques, such evidence remains vulnerable to information loss, errors, manipulation and doubt."
With the publication of the “Forensic Digitization” call for proposals, the Cyberagentur is launching a research program in which interested consortia can participate in the award procedure from 20 May 2025. The competition is planned for a period of 4 years.
The invitation to tender was published in the Supplement to the Official Journal of the European Union with the contract notice number TED 322624-2025. The end of the competition is 02.07.2025, 11:00 am.
Contact:
Agentur für Innovation in der Cybersicherheit GmbH
Große Steinstraße 19
06108 Halle (Saale)
Michael Lindner
Press Officer
Phone: +49 151 44150 645
E-mail: presse@cyberagentur.de
Background: Cyberagentur
The Agentur für Innovation in der Cybersicherheit GmbH (Cyberagentur) was founded by the German Federal Government in 2020 as a fully in-house company of the Federal Government under the joint leadership of the German Federal Ministry of Defence and the German Federal Ministry of the Interior and Community with the aim of adopting a cross-departmental view of internal and external security in the field of cybersecurity with a focus on application strategy. Against this backdrop, the work of the Cyberagentur is largely aimed at the institutionalised implementation of highly innovative projects that are associated with a high risk in terms of achieving the objectives, but at the same time can have a very high potential for disruption if successful.
The Cyberagentur is part of the National Security Strategy of the Federal Republic of Germany.
The Cyberagentur is headed by Prof Dr Christian Hummert as Scientific Director and Managing Director and Daniel Mayer as Commercial Director.
Til Weißflog, program manager and expert for forensic digitisation at the Cyberagentur
https://www.cyberagentur.de/en/press/spuren-verbinden-beweise-sichern-staerkung-...
https://www.cyberagentur.de/en/programs/fd/
https://ted.europa.eu/de/notice/-/detail/322624-2025
Linking digital and analogue traces, securing evidence automatically. The Cyberagentur is looking fo ...
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