A Composite User Authentication Architecture for Mobile Devices

ABSTRACT

As the functionality and services provided by mobile devices increases, the need to provide effective user authentication against misuse and abuse becomes ever more imperative. With traditional secret knowledge based techniques having been proven weak, a requirement exists for authentication techniques to provide stronger protection. This paper proposes the use of a portfolio of authentication techniques to provide a robust, accurate and transparent authentication mechanism for mobile devices, extending security beyond point-of-entry into a continuous and user convenient approach. An Intelligent Authentication Management System (IAMS) is described that provides a continuous confidence level in the identity of the user, removing access to sensitivity services and information with low confidence levels and providing automatic access with higher confidence levels.  The theoretical level of system performance is examined on a range of mobile devices, suggesting that it should be possible to achieve acceptably low levels of false acceptance and false rejection error in practical application.


AUTHORS

Photo of Professor Nathan Clarke

Centre for Security, Communications and Network Research University of Plymouth, Plymouth
United Kingdom
Security Research Institute Edith Cowan University Perth,
Australia

Professor Nathan Clarke is a Professor in Cyber Security and Digital Forensics at the University of Plymouth. He is also an adjunct Professor at Edith Cowan University in Australia. His research interests reside in the areas of information security, biometrics, forensics, and cloud security. Prof Clarke has over 200 outputs consisting of journal papers, conference papers, books, edited books, book chapters, and patents.  He is the Chair of the IFIP TC11.12  Working Group on the Human Aspects of Information Security & Assurance. Prof Clarke is a chartered engineer, a fellow of the British Computing Society (BCS), and a senior member of the IEEE.

Photo of Professor Steve Furnell

School of Computer Science University of Nottingham,
Nottingham, United Kingdom

Steven Furnell is a professor of cyber security at the University of Nottingham. He is also an Honorary Professor with Nelson Mandela University in South Africa and an Adjunct Professor with Edith Cowan University in Western Australia. His research interests include: usability of security and privacy, security management and culture, and technologies for user authentication and intrusion detection. He has authored over 340 papers in refereed international journals and conference proceedings, as well as books including Cybercrime: Vandalizing the Information Society and Computer Insecurity: Risking the System. Prof. Furnell is the Chair of Technical Committee 11 (security and privacy) within the International Federation for Information Processing, and a board member of the Chartered Institute of Information Security.

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Keywords

A

AI
APT

C

C2
C2S
CDX
CIA
CIP
CPS

D

DNS
DoD
DoS

I

IA
ICS

M

P

PDA

S

SOA

X

XRY

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