Research

My current research interests include Information Security, Privacy, Anonymity, and Identity Management. I am also interested in digital forensics and the application of AI to the field of digital forensics.

Students:

Philosophiae Doctor
  1. N Mpofu, A trust framework for IdMaaS. In Progress.

Magister Scientiae

  1. X Gwaqa, A framework for determining PoPI compliance in a large financial institution.
  2. P Du Toit, An evaluation of non-relational distributed data stores for user generated content. (Completed)
  3. MP Cele, An Investigation of employee's attitude towards information security policies when actively involved in its formulation.

Magister Technologiae

  1. M Sikhwivilu, Business value of service-oriented architecture in the South African banking industry and how to achieve it. (Co-supervisor)

Work in research:
Privacy and the right to privacy is a complex issue -- and though most people seem to understand it, I think many only understand it when it is lost (my bias towards believing that privacy can be achieved is shown here -- I'm ever the optimist). In that regard, it is important to describe it in a manner that ordinary people can understand it, and in a manner that ordinary people can enjoy it. So privacy can be protected in several ways: through the law (which, as history is written and rewritten, will forever be a blotch on the United States' permanent record, since their own domestic policy was used to violate the privacy of the constituants; dare I say "lest we forget"?), through best practice (which is basically trusting trust, and through technological means.

Technological means in itself is also extremely complex -- suppose we have proper privacy enhancing tech (PETs), what then? Who will force the data motivated to use them? Legislation? Us? But that to me is for the moment a secondary question -- I want to understand how technology can be principled on privacy. And not just technology that the users use, but technology that the watchers use. 

Second to that, I am also motivated by Jean Baudrillard's simulacra and simulation: is privacy simply a simulacrum of the second order? An interesting topic, but more likely one left for quiet contemplation rather than lively dinner conversation.

Digital forensics is a field that I've only recently branched into -- AI promises a lot of interesting ideas here, but can it be trusted?