Cyber attacks are becoming increasingly aggressive. They particularly threaten online devices. On the occasion of the international Safer Internet Day, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, together with the German Institute for Standardization (DIN), launched an initiative for a cross-platform unambiguous identification and authentication of persons, machines and processes.

State Secretary Matthias Machnig said: "More and more devices are online. For this reason, it is absolutely necessary to guarantee protection against cyber attacks. This is important both for companies and for acceptance among customers. Therefore we have launched the initiative on secure digital identities. It aims at the mutual unambiguous identification of devices and machines and thus the prevention of cyber attacks. Safe equipment is indispensible for internet safety."

According to estimates, about 20-50 billion devices will be hooked up to the Internet of Things by 2020.