Reinhard Posch

Reinhard Posch as founder of the Institute of Applied Information Processing and Communications (now known as the Institute of Information Security) at Graz University of Technology headed the institute from its very beginning and has become emeritus on October 1st 2019. His research interests include applied information processing with a focus on it security, eGovernment and IoT. As the CIO for the federal government since 2001 he is primarily involved in the strategic coordination of activities in the field of information and communications technology that concern all levels of government. As scientific director of the Austrian Secure Information Technology Centre the main efforts are computer security, cryptography, secure hard- and software and eGovernment. He is chairman of the board of trustees of the non-profit foundation Stiftung Secure Information and Communication Technologies SIC which has been donated by Graz University of Technology. As such he participated in many large scale pilot. One outstanding result in this context is the "Handy-Signatur" a most successful instance of the Austrian Citizen card that was also used as a model for the remote Signature of eIDaS. He acted also as Chair of the Board of ENISA, the European Network and Security Agency. He took part in various groups installed by the European Commission to elaborate ICT and security strategies (e.g. "Future Internet Visionaries", RISEPTIS). He was a member of the "Rat der IT Weisen" he is providing advice to the Commissioners Kroes and Sefkovic in the area of IT-Security to assist the implementation of the Digital Agenda. Helping Greece to recover from the economic crisis he worked with the Reichenbach Group to assist implementing innovation in the Greek eGovernment. He also participates as an advisor of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in the IT advisory board. Reinhard Posch got awarded the Grand Decoration of Honor in Silver for Services to the Republic of Austria.