Engineering Safe & Secure Software in the Age of Coding Agents
Abstract:
The Fraunhofer IEM researches the future of engineering — methods, tools, and processes for the development of safe & secure software‑defined products and applications, usually in close collaboration with industry partners. While we have been using AI — and machine learning in particular — in engineering for a long time, the recent leap in generative AI and capable coding agents is now reshaping the discipline at unusual pace.
The talk gives an overview of our research on secure software engineering, covering recent developments and how we at Fraunhofer IEM see the future of software engineering — examples span the full software lifecycle: integrated hazard & threat modeling, development‑time defect detection embedded in the workflow, and runtime observation of deployed products and the software supply chain.
Although our examples come from cross‑industry engineering rather than the medical domain, the underlying questions translate: medical AI products are still engineered software, and the practices that build, secure, and certify them are now under the same regulatory pressure — from the Cyber Resilience Act and the MDR — and are shifting under the same agentic forces. The talk ends with open questions — the discussion is part of the programme.
About Matthias:
Dr. Matthias Meyer is Division Manager of the “Software Engineering and IT Security” division and head of its department “Safe & Secure IoT Systems” at Fraunhofer IEM. Together with his team and in close cooperation with companies and research institutions, he researches processes, methods and tools that support organisations in the efficient development of safe and secure software-intensive systems following the paradigm of “(Safety &) Security by Design”. Dr. Meyer is a member of the Bitkom Management Club and of the VDMA working group “Industrial Security”. Since its foundation in 2011, Dr. Meyer has contributed to the development of Fraunhofer IEM. Previously, he was Executive Manager in the Software Quality Lab and Researcher in the Software Engineering Group at Paderborn University.