Dr Abubakar-Sadiq Shehu
About
I am a Cyber Security Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Surrey’s DECaDE Centre, where my work focuses on secure digital content provenance, decentralised identity management, and GDPR-compliant trust systems. My research integrates reputation frameworks and privacy-preserving technologies, particularly self-sovereign identity, to build secure digital ecosystems. I hold a PhD in computer science from the University of Porto, Portugal, and have published extensively on topics like secure data delegation and decentralised identity verification.
From 2017–2023, I contributed to the European NanoSTIMA project at INESC TEC Porto, designing GDPR-compliant platforms for secure health data sharing. Prior roles include enhancing Google Search’s NLP algorithms for Sub-Saharan African languages, developing fraud prevention strategies at Apple, and consulting for tech firms on security best practices.
Affiliations and memberships
Research
Publications
Sharing content, including photos, has become effortless thanks to social media and enterprise services. However, these platforms often overlook protecting content owners’ rights, such as proof of ownership, usage rights, and privacy. In this paper, we present a novel SSI application that enables photographers to collect credentials for their photos and assert ownership to third parties in a privacy-preserving manner. We describe a proof-of-concept implementation using the Hyperledger Aries SSI library, which can be extended for real-world deployment. We also discuss the potential for scaling this implementation.