State Security and Intelligence Directorate (German: Direktion für Staatsschutz und Nachrichtendienst, DSN) is a state executive body of Austria, a special service designed to ensure the protection of the constitutional order and ensure the national security of the country in the political, economic, military, scientific and technological, information, social, demographic and environmental spheres, conducting counterintelligence, combating terrorism and maintain foreign intelligence operations.^[2][3][4]

Established on December 1, 2021, in order to replace the old BVT service.^[5]

Mission

• ensuring state security and intelligence activities. 
• The state security unit deals with the prevention of terrorist attacks and the prevention of threats to the constitutional order,
• collection of information, its analysis and research of threats.

History

The decision to create the Office came after the intelligence failures of the Federal Office for Constitutional Protection and the War on Terror (BVT), which was unable to prevent the attacks in Vienna in 2020, despite numerous warnings and previous surveillance of terrorists.^[6][7]

In September 2021, it was announced that Omar Haijawi-Pirchner, an Austrian police officer of Jordanian origin, had been appointed head of the new body and that he would take office concurrently with the establishment of the organization on December 1, 2021.^[8]