About Families and IoT

Families and IoT is a research project looking at the way that families manage the cyber security of their IoT devices.

IoT devices (such as Amazon’s Alexa, the Nest Thermostat or Ring doorbell) are typically marketed as bringing efficiency and automation into the home. Less is explained about how to make sure the devices are set up in the most secure manner and how to manage multiple users of the device, particularly when there are children involved.

This project aims to understand more about the type of devices that families in the UK have in their homes, how family members use them, how they learn about keeping them secure.

If you are interested in helping us with this research, details of what we are currently working on can be found on the Current Research page.

Research Team

This project is the PhD work of Sarah Turner.

Sarah is a researcher in the School of Computing at the University of Kent, and a member of the Kent Interdisciplinary Research Centre in Cyber Security KirCCS.

Prior to this, Sarah received an MPA in Digital Technology and Public Policy from UCL’s Department of Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy, and spent some time working as a Research Associate at PETRAS, the National Centre of Excellence for IoT Systems Cybersecurity.

You can visit her personal website or her Kent profile. You can follow her on Twitter @thepublicturner.

Sarah’s supervisors are Dr Jason Nurse and Professor Shujun Li.