Year 2 Student - 2024 Cohort - Cohort 6

I am a second year cohort 6 CDT student in CDT Cyber Security Everywhere. My name is Jiun (pronounced like June).

I completed my first degree in Information Technology at Monash University, Australia. Following that, I worked as a software engineer in an investment company for several years. I have experience running an online business and working in trading and investment.

More recently, I completed an MSc Information Security at Royal Holloway. My master’s thesis was about mobile network injection, inspired by Amnesty International’s Pegasus Project. I am passionate about equality in our society and human rights.

The CDT program is a stimulating environment for learning and personal development with academic and industry experts. The learning curve is steep; with support from current and previous CDT cohorts the challenges are rewarding.

The fun stuff that I enjoy doing are reading novels, painting, running, hiking, volunteering at my local hospice, singing, playing music and going to operas.

Understanding Older Adults’ Cyber Resilience: A Systematic Approach

Digital technology has been adopted rapidly since the pandemic in 2020. Meanwhile, cybercrime such as scams, phishing attacks and misinformation has increased. Vulnerable groups of the population are less able to defend themselves against online risks. A survey in England and Wales found that older adults suffer more severe cases of cybercrime (e.g., financial loss) and repeat victimisation. In 2025, the UK government enacts the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill to support the National Cyber Strategy (NCS) to protect the country’s digital economy and to defend the “whole of society” with the ambition of “building a resilient and prosperous digital UK”.

A definition of resilience is “the capacity to learn, recover and bounce back after having negative or adverse experiences online, encompassing both human psychological and behavioural dimensions”. Previous studies in the resilience of older adults have focused on family and social support, self-empowerment, digital literacy, and cyber security behaviours. However, less is focused on investigating technology design for older adults informed by linking vulnerability factors and cyber resilience.

This PhD research aims to understand the vulnerabilities of older users and to contribute to the knowledge of cyber security considerations for software designers. To achieve these goals, the research proposes this overarching research question: How can we build resilient digital ecosystems for vulnerable older users? This question can be narrowed down to the following research questions:
RQ1: What are older adults' vulnerabilities and sources of resilience?
RQ2: How do developers negotiate these vulnerabilities when designing digital products for older users?

• London Data Week 2025 (https://londondataweek.org/)
• Compass Annual Conference 2025 (https://www.bristol.ac.uk/cdt/compass/compass-annual-conference/)

My academic placement was with Prof. Adam Joinson at the University of Bath. The purpose of the placement was to explore the meaning of resilience and its relevance to the whole-of-society approach in response to the UK government’s upcoming cyber resilience bill. The questions raised by this study aim to understand resilience for vulnerable people, the tools available for them and the effectiveness of these tools. A natural progression from this work would be to investigate the resilience baseline for a vulnerable group to build an information ecosystem that would serve them.

My industry placement was led by Dr Alicia Wanless at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Prof. Adam Joinson from the University of Bath. The placement aims to write an opinion editorial on “resilience” within the context of cyber security and privacy. Resilience is a term that is increasingly used in policies. Policymakers are aiming for society, at the centre of which are people and systems, to adapt, continue to function and rebound rapidly following setbacks. Research suggested that social cohesion is important in maintaining a strong and workable community. Instead of a top-down approach, we looked at what other nations have done to weave resilience through the bottom-up, citizen-lead approach.