By Zeeshan Siddiqui, University of West of Scotland
10 July 2020
Finally, some good news in a tense pandemic year. Cybersecurity SICSA grant title, “Analysis and impact of Cybersecurity Vulnerabilities on Excessive and Un-administered use of Smart Devices by Children of All Ages”, was completed and conducted by Dr. Zeeshan Siddiqui in the University of the West of Scotland. This study has presented a survey and a security analysis on the use of smart devices, such as an iPhone, by children of all ages. Children were allowed to access mobile games and other device contents while having both, restricted and unrestricted security and privacy settings. Two types of behaviour were analyzed; Observations on Unrestricted Contents, and Observations on Restricted Contents. For both behavioural analyses, the mobile phone was restored to its factory settings. There were several security attacks and threats observed. This study is going to provide a wider impact on parents and carers who have a lack of cybersecurity awareness and have no knowledge to adapt new security frameworks or mechanisms. This study will help them understand the built-in security, privacy and parental guidance features and their effectiveness within a smart device to safeguard their children online activities and usage. Security testing, analysis and results are accepted to be published in 3rd IEEE International Conference on Computing, Electronics and Communications Engineering (iCCECE ’20), scheduled to be held in August this year, in the University of Essex, London, UK.
