Engineering Secure and Sustainable Software—Meet Michael Koppmann of SBA Research

Michael is a senior information security consultant at SBA Research, with a career centered on application security, penetration testing, and secure software engineering. His research spans sustainable software development, secure and maintainable software engineering, and privacy-enhancing technologies. 

He is also one of the OWASP Vienna chapter leaders, helping to strengthen the local information security community.

#Can you tell us about SBA Research?

SBA Research is Austria’s first and largest research center dedicated exclusively to information security. It was founded in 2006 by TU Wien, Graz University of Technology, and the University of Vienna. 

Alongside its research activities, SBA Research provides professional information security services, combining scientific expertise with practical experience to turn research into real-world cybersecurity solutions. Today, SBA Research employs more than 130 people. 

#How does environmental sustainability fit into your organization?

Just as SBA Research recognized the importance of information security early on, we now see a similar need to build knowledge and practical expertise around the environmental sustainability of software. As a research center, we’re well positioned to explore how to develop green software practices without compromising security, reliability, or usability. 

Two of our research groups contribute directly to this work. The Networks and Critical Infrastructures Security Research Group (ERIS) studies the security and resilience of complex critical infrastructures, including power grids. Its work includes projects supporting the transition toward more decentralized and renewable energy systems. The Complexity and Resilience Research Group (CORE) develops analytical approaches for understanding complex, dynamic systems and improving their resilience and performance. It applies these approaches across software, agriculture, energy, and environmental monitoring.

SBA Research’s professional services team is also exploring how secure software development practices can be integrated with green software engineering. We see security and sustainability as mutually reinforcing: both benefit from efficient, maintainable systems and deliberate engineering decisions. Applied together, these principles can support software that is more resource-efficient, reliable, and user-friendly.

#Are there any other sustainability initiatives that you can share?

In December 2022, I delivered a TEDx talk on the environmental impact of inefficient software and growing system complexity. Since then, I have continued exploring these topics through articles and conference talks, including a 2026 presentation at sec4dev Dialogues on the relationship between ESG and the Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) specification. 

At the organizational level, SBA Research launched Digital Gardening in April 2026. The project teaches methods, governance frameworks, and tools for managing the quality, security, and sustainability of software systems throughout their lifecycle.

SBA Research has also participated in several research projects related to sustainability. These projects, including space4energy, NurZu!, LivestockSense, EDIH innovATE, and PICUS, focus on topics such as energy grids, agriculture, and environmental monitoring. 

Our projects illustrate something we consider increasingly important: digital technologies and sustainability cannot be treated separately. As energy, agriculture, and infrastructure systems become increasingly dependent on software, those systems themselves need to be efficient, secure, resilient, and maintainable.

#Why did SBA Research join GSF?

I first encountered the Green Software Foundation while researching my TEDx talk in 2022. Since then, I have followed its development with great interest and have been impressed by the work the foundation and its community have accomplished.

By joining the Green Software Foundation, SBA Research aims to bring our security and resilience expertise to the green software community while learning from organizations already translating sustainability principles into practice. Becoming a member gives us an opportunity to connect research with practical implementation and to help develop approaches that are both scientifically grounded and usable in real software projects. That combination is where we believe we can create broader, industry-wide impact.