Christian Hawellek has studied at the faculty of law of Leibniz University of Hanover, specialising on European and German economic and IT/IP-law. His primary field of work are European and national research projects addressing legal issues related to data security and data protection law, particularly those related to questions of homeland security, network based intelligence and smart surveillance. Research activities for the private sector were addressing legal aspects of IT security concepts and audits (incl. cyber crime prevention), online payment services in multi-player constellations and data protection and data security in complex environments of distributed information services.