ATHENE has a long tradition in cybersecurity both through its involved organizations and its predecessor centers. Even though ATHENE in its current has been founded in 2019 it is based on a very long history in cybersecurity research.

The accession of Goethe University Frankfurt further strengthens ATHENE's cybersecurity research. Goethe University's contribution is particularly focused on system and network security, high-performance computing security, as well as data protection and legal aspects of cybersecurity.

CRISP is upgraded to a National Research Center for Applied Cybersecurity. Since January 1, it is a research center of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft for its two Darmstadt-based institutes SIT and IGD, in cooperation with Technical University of Darmstadt and Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences. At the end of 2019, the research center is renamed ATHENE.

In the context of its Digital Hub Initiative, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs designates the region Frankfurt-Darmstadt as a pre-eminent hotspot for the digital transformation of the economy. Darmstadt takes on the role of "Digital Hub Cybersecurity", thus complementing the "Digital Hub FinTech" that was already announced in Frankfurt in 2016.

In June, Darmstadt wins the Bitkom competition "Digital City (Digitale Stadt)". Over several years, Darmstadt will be developed into a digital model city. The digitalization projects focus on traffic, energy, schools and healthcare.

On December 1, the start-up incubator "StartUpSecure" is launched at CRISP. The incubator is sponsored by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and aims at promoting young companies in the field of IT security.

The center of excellence "Sicherheit und Datenschutz in der Digitalen Welt" opens, in which the Fraunhofer Institutes SIT und IGD cooperate to facilitate the rapid transfer of research results into practice. The founding of the excellence center further strengthens Darmstadt’s inter­national cybersecurity leadership.

The IT security research centers EC SPRIDE and CASED, funded by federal government and state respectively, bundle their resources to form CRISP (Center for Research in Security and Privacy). Members of CRISP are Technical University of Darmstadt, with its IT research profile area CYSEC, the Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences, the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology (Fraunhofer SIT) and the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research (Fraunhofer IGD), both located in Darmstadt. This makes CRISP the biggest alliance of research facilities in the field of cybersecurity in Europe.

In the the winter semester 2014/15, the University of Applied Sciences in Darmstadt establishes the dual study program for IT security (Kooperativer Studiengang IT-Security, KITS).

The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) supports the European Center for Security and Privacy by Design (EC SPRIDE) as one of three competence centers for IT security. EC SPRIDE aims at developing insights, procedures and tools which help to secure software and IT systems in the design phase and over the complete lifecycle.

In the winter semester 2010/11, the specialized master's program M.Sc. IT Security will be introduced at the Technical University of Darmstadt and the specialization IT Security will be established at the Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences.

DZI becomes part of the LOEWE center Center for Advanced Security Research Darmstadt (CASED). LOEWE stands for the State Offensive for Scientific and Economic Excellence (Landesoffensive für wissenschaftlich-ökonomische Exzellenz), an initiative of the Hessian Ministry for Science and Art which supports the creation of regional focus areas and the networking of science, non-university research and economy. In CASED, Technical University of Darmstadt, the Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences and the Fraunhofer Institute SIT are bundling their competences in the field of IT security.

The Darmstadt Center for IT-Security (DZI) is founded. Until 2008 it bundles the various IT security activities of the Technical University of Darmstadt.

With the support of the Horst Görtz Foundation, Claudia Eckert becomes the first professor for Security in Information Technology at the Technische Universität Darmstadt.

Darmstadt’s universities and research institutions, Technical University of Darmstadt, Fraunhofer IGD, GMD-SIT (now Fraunhofer SIT), GMD-IPSI, Darmstat University of Applied Sciences and several industrial representatives found the Competence Center for Applied Security (CAST).

Professor José Luis Encarnação establishes the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research IGD. The institute is considered one of the first research institutions with its own website, doing research on internet technologies.

Foundation of the German Data Center (DRZ) in Darmstadt. In the 1970s, this became the Institute for Remote Data Processing, later the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology SIT.