A Systematic Literature Review of Behavioural Profiling for Smartphone Security: Challenges and Open Problems

Abstract

Smartphones contain different types of data and applications, such as images, text messages, emails, and mobile banking applications, and may also hold personal and health information. Current authentication approaches do not re-authenticate in order to re-validate the user's identity after the user has initially accessed the mobile phone. Consequently, there is a security benefit if authentication could be applied continuously and transparently (i.e., without obstructing the user's activities) to authenticate legitimate users and be maintained beyond the point of entry. Behavioural profiling is an example of behavioural biometric authentication. The main aim of this research study is to conduct a systematic review of the current research literature regarding behavioural profiling for smartphone security. The paper demonstrates that there is a lack of investigation into behavioural profiling for mobile devices. The study also examines possible challenges in behavioural profiling authentication and points to some of the open problems which need to be tackled.