Emerging Technologies for Security Operations

Project seminar for the master programmes CS, ITSE, DH, CybSec, DE and SSE. The information below is from the most recent run in summer semester 2026.

Recent advances in big data and artificial intelligence have led to many significant and substantial changes in today’s digital landscape. The penetration of these emerging technologies into cybersecurity, and more specifically into enterprise cyber defense, is highly anticipated, but unfortunately still very limited at the moment. This seminar aims to review the state of the art of Enterprise Security Operation Centers (SOC), teach and train essential knowledge and skills for various phases/roles in the SOC, and explore the possibilities of leveraging emerging technologies towards an advanced and automated SOC.

Requirements

• Knowledge and skills in the security of applications, operating systems and networking.
• You know, or are interested in learning, what the following terms mean:
  • IDS, SOC, MDR, SIEM, SOAR, EDR, NDR, XDR, etc.
  • Splunk, Elastic, CrowdStrike, Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Sentinel, etc.
  • CTI, NVD, CVE, CPE, etc.

Further readings

• Awesome SOC
• The NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) 2.0
• The MITRE ATT&CK® Matrix for Enterprise
• Agentic Security Hub

Grading

The final evaluation will be based on: report, presentation, design, implementation, participation in the seminar.

• Presentations & demonstrations (PoC implementations): 3 times (80%)
• Technical report (20%)
• Your active participation, creative/innovative ideas, or successful implementations will be appreciated with bonus points.
• The above-mentioned evaluation principles are only for reference and subject to change. The concrete evaluation may slightly differ from team to team depending on the selected topic(s) and other relevant factors.

Schedule (SS 2026)

The seminar started on the first day of SS 2026, with regular meetings every week or upon request. Capacity was limited to 10 participants (first come, first served). Sessions took place at 13:30 in room P-E.12 (HPI Campus II).

• 13.04.2026 – Introductory session
• 20.04.–18.05.2026: Phase I
  • 20.04.2026 – Subscription deadline (Studienreferat), tutorial session 1 (SOC 201), team building and topic assignment (per email)
  • 04.05.2026 – Tutorial session 2
  • 11.05.2026 – Tutorial session 3
  • 18.05.2026 – Joint presentation session (checkpoint 1, Prüfungstermin)
• 18.05.–15.06.2026: Phase II
  • 15.06.2026 – Joint presentation session (checkpoint 2)
• 15.06.–13.07.2026: Phase III
  • 13.07.2026 – Joint presentation session (final)

Contacts

• Feng Cheng (Campus II, O1-E.07, 0331 5509-519)
• Pejman Najafi (Campus II, O1-E.06, 0331 5509-3959)