Released on = March 27, 2007, 1:33 am

Press Release Author = Humboldt University Berlin

Industry = Industrial

Press Release Summary = Ko-RFID is a research project sponsored by the German
Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology. Generally speaking, the project covers
RFID and collaboration, and the impact of the former on the latter within the supply
chain. The project is divided into 9 sub-projects, each approaching the main
research questions from a different angle. Partners of the project are: Gerry Weber
AG, Daimler Chrysler AG, Gustav Wellmann GmbH & Co. KG, SAP AG, Technische
Universität Berlin (Logistics), Humboldt-Universität Berlin, Ottovon-
Guericke-Universität Magdeburg

Press Release Body = Initiated by Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the Ko-RFID
project was started in August 2006 and is dedicated to studying the impact that RFID
technology might have on the coordination and cooperation processes within an
RFID-enabled supply chain. The project is split into nine modules, each having its
own objectives and responsibility for certain aspects of the general problem area.
The primary focus of the "Privacy and Security" module addresses security aspects of
data storage, processing and sharing in the RFID-enabled supply chain. The objective
of the research activities is to evaluate and produce solutions for security threats
in the supply chain under the specific conditation that it consists of a number of
cooperating but to some extent or at a specific point in time also competing
companies.
The overall project team comprises researches from universities
(Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Otto-von-Guericke-University) and industry partners
(GERRY WEBER AG, SAP Research) who will cooperatively produce a set of requirements,
recommendations and solutions that address security issues in scenarios where
certain logistic processes rely on RFID technology.
The distinctive feature of the research is its emphasis on the security problems
that are specific to B2B scenarios. So far research was mostly concerned with
privacy problems that arise when end-customers interact with RFID-labeled items.
Nevertheless, the introduction of RFID technology in the supply chain significantly
increases the amount of stored and processed data and provides new possibilities for
data sharing and data mining. Therefore our research focusses on the protection of
RFID specific data that the companies may see as sensitive or private. That includes
protection from unauthorized reading or modification of the data, either by
third-parties or by supply chain partners, ensuring the authenticity of the data and
managing controlled access to that data in order to provide secure and efficient
data sharing mechanism. Additionally, it will be examined how the restrictions,
which are inevitable when certain security measures are implemented, may affect the
usability of the systems and efficiency of the data access and exchange.
In a first project step, the variety of supply chains will be grouped in a number of
general scenarios that will be evaluated against potential RFID-specific security
threats. Then by relying on classical approaches and by utilizing information
collected from industry partners a set of security requirements will be developed
for each scenario. The requirements will be compared against existing and proposed
solutions and in case discrepancies between the requirements and functionality these
solutions provide will be found, the solutions should be updated accordingly or may
even be redesigned. The module is to be concluded with the implementation of
proposed solutions in a prototype, which will demonstrate the results and serve as a
proof of concept.





Web Site = http://www.korfid.de

Contact Details = Informations:

Sergej Evdokimov
Telefon: 030 2093-5734
E-Mail: evdokim@wiwi.hu-berlin.de

Director:

Dr. Gerrit Tamm
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Institut für Wirtschaftsinformatik
Forschungszentrum Ko-RFID
Spandauer Str. 1
10178 Berlin
Telefon: 030 2093-5742
Fax: 030 20935741
E-Mail: tamm@wiwi.hu-berlin.de
Webseite http://www.korfid.de

Press contact:

Julia Gusman
Telefon: 030 24375279
E-Mail: gousmanj@wiwi.hu-berlin.de