Tasks

The Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) was formed on 1 January 1991 and is part of the Federal Ministry of the Interior. The BSI is an independent and neutral body for questions relating to IT security in the information society. This makes it a unique organisation when compared with counterparts in other EU countries.

The BSI currently employs around 1.552 computer scientists, physicists, mathematicians and other specialists. The BSI is headquartered in Bonn.

With the rapid advances made in information technology, new IT applications are appearing in almost all areas of our daily lives and often accompanied by new vulnerabilities. The more dependent we become on information technology, the more we must question and assess its security. More than ever before, our society is threatened by computer failure, misuse or sabotage. Efforts to ensure that information technology does what it should do and does not do what it should not do have been inadequate to date. Since the problems in information technology are so multifaceted, the spectrum of tasks handled by the BSI is also very complex. Task breakdown in accordance with the BSI Act: Gesamtaktenplan des BSI gem §11 Informationsfreiheitsgesetz (IFG)

The work of the BSI is organised into eight directorates-general. Each one consists of up to three separate sections. These sections are subdivided into various divisions.