Understanding Users' Requirements for Data Protection in Smartphones

Ildar Muslukhov,Jonathan Lester,Konstantin Beznosov,Yazan Boshmaf,Cynthia Kuo

doi:10.1109/icdew.2012.83

Ildar Muslukhov, Jonathan Lester + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1109/icdew.2012.83

Copy DOI

Abstract

Securing smartphones' data is a new and growing concern, especially when this data represents valuable or sensitive information. Even though there are many data protection solutions for smartphones, there are no studies that investigate users' requirements for such solutions. In this paper, we approach smartphones' data protection problem in a user-centric way, and analyze the requirements of data protection systems from users' perspectives. We elicit the data types that users desire to protect, investigate current users' practices in protecting such data, and show how security requirements vary for different data types. We report the results of an exploratory user study, where we interviewed 22 participants. Overall, we found that users would like to secure their smartphone data, but find it inconvenient to do so in practice using solutions available today.

Highlights

Recent market research shows that users are gradually shifting from Personal Computers (PC) to smartphones
Half of them were conducted at the University of British Columbia (UBC) Point Grey campus, and the rest at UBC’s Robson Square campus
That some of the participants had more than one job, that is why sum of the number of participants per occupation will not be equal to the total number of participants

Summary

Introduction

Recent market research shows that users are gradually shifting from Personal Computers (PC) to smartphones. It is predicted that the number of sold smartphones will surpass the number of sold laptops by the end of 2011 [1], and that smartphones will become the main access device for the Web [2]. This shift is accompanied by an increased interest in mobile applications. Today’s smartphones employ sophisticated Operating Systems (OSs) that enable a wide set of functionality such as personal data storage, PC-like Web browsing, music and video streaming, GPS navigation, video and voice recording, and third-party applications. Thanks to the large internal storage of modern smartphones, users can store gigabytes of data, which could valuable or sensitive such as personal photos, contact details, personal and work related documents, calls history, private messages, etc

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion