Bernd Kowalski

Head of Department

Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (BSI)

Bernd Kowalski was born on March 22nd 1954 in Siegen, Germany. He visited university at the Rheinisch Westfälische Technische Hochschule (RWTH) in Aachen. In 1982 he joined Deutsche Telekom and worked first in the area of data communication networks. He was a member of the ITU standardization activities for Electronic Mail and Directory Systems (X.400 / X.500) and one of the editors of X.509, one of the first PKI-standards.
In 1990 he became product manager and head of the Productcenter Telesec of Deutsche Telekom, that provided secure communication products and services, e. g. Certificate and Smartcard Services for public Digital Signature and corporate security solutions for business customers.
In 2002 he changed to the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) in Bonn and took over a division that is responsible for Technical Standardization, Certification, Conformity Testing and development of Protection Profiles and Technical Recommendations in the field of Information Security.
He is in charge of the division “Cyber Security for Digitization and Electronic Identities” since April 2019 and lead the division division “Certification and Standardization” from April 2019 to April 2020. His activities covers all aspects of BSI-certifications (till April 2020), certain ID-solutions and the support of the Digitalization projects of the Federal Government, Security aspects in the upcoming public 5G mobile networks, and cyber security aspects of eHealth and Smart Metering / Smart Grids, Industry 4.0, intelligent transport systems and the digital administration.
Bernd Kowalski is chairman of the Management Committee of the European Agreement of Mutual Recognition of IT-security product certificates (SOGIS-MRA) and member of the Management Committee of the international Common Criteria Recognition Arrangement (CCRA). He has been involved in the negotiation of the Certification Framework of the European Cybersecurity Act (CSA) and supports establishment of first European certification schemes.