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Fraunhofer FOKUS is expanding its immersive SIRIOS Lab in Berlin with another use case: a new cybersecurity scenario. It shows how cyberattacks arise, what they affect in everyday work, and what decisions must be made in an emergency. The lab helps companies and administrations identify technical and organizational vulnerabilities and prepare more effectively for IT security incidents.

The US Patent and Trademark Office has granted a patent for a technology developed by Fraunhofer FOKUS. The invention forms the basis for a novel semantic search function that guides users to the relevant information even when they do not use the same terms as the authors of the content.

On 5 November 2026, the 52nd Public Safety and Security Future Forum organised by ZOES Berlin took place at Fraunhofer FOKUS. The focus was on the consequences of the hybrid threat landscape for the economy and public administration. Experts from the worlds of politics, public administration, business and the media discussed how organisations can strengthen their resilience and prepare for various crisis scenarios.

With the new Sovereign Platform and Innovation Engineering (SPIN) business unit, Fraunhofer FOKUS has been strengthening its activities in sovereign, secure, and high-quality digital systems since September 2026. The business unit supports public administrations, operators of critical infrastructure, and companies in designing trustworthy digital systems and operating them sustainably.

The integration of Eclipse Qrisp, the open-source quantum programming framework initiated by Fraunhofer FOKUS, with the NVIDIA CUDA-Q platform for hybrid quantum-classical computing is now publicly available. Developers can install it today with a single command.

A research paper co-authored by scientists from Fraunhofer FOKUS was honored with the prestigious ACM Distinguished Paper Award at the 41st IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2026). The award went to the paper “Stop When It Matters: Detectability-Guided Microbenchmarking for Performance Regression Testing,” which presents a new approach to more efficient and resource-conserving performance testing in software development.

Researchers from Fraunhofer FOKUS were honoured with the Best Paper Award at the 2nd International Conference on AI-Driven Cybersecurity Infrastructure (CYBER-AI 2026) at the end of September. The award was presented to Florin Popescu, Marius Corici, Hemant Zope, Michell Boerger, Philipp Lämmel, Nikolay Tcholtchev, Thomas Magedanz and Ilie Daniel Gheorghe Pop for their paper “Integrating Quantum Key Distribution for Secure Connectivity in 5G and 6G Core Networks”, which addresses the challenges of post-quantum security.

The global race for quantum computing has been underway for some time now and is all too often defined by the performance of new hardware. In the long term, however, success will be measured not only by who develops the most powerful quantum processors, but also by who creates the best tools for developers. In this interview, Manfred Hauswirth explains the role that software stacks, open source, and technological sovereignty play in this context, and how Fraunhofer FOKUS supports the development of European quantum ecosystems.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems FOKUS was honored with the 2026 Quantum Effects Award in the “Quantum Computing Software & Algorithms” category. The award recognized the open-source framework “Eclipse Qrisp,” initiated by Fraunhofer FOKUS, which facilitates the development and application of quantum algorithms.

Through this membership, Fraunhofer FOKUS strengthens collaboration with other Fraunhofer institutes and contributes its expertise to joint research projects for civil and public safety and security.