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.
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
2025
