Augmented cognition for continuous authentication

Abstract

Authentication serves the gatekeeping function in computing systems. Methods used in authentication fall into three major paradigms: ‘what you know’, ‘who you are’ and ‘what you have’ of which the first is still the most commonly applied in the form of passwords authentication. Recall and recognition are the cognitive functions central to the ‘what you know’ authentication paradigm. Studies have shown that more secure passwords are harder to recall and this often leads to habits that facilitate recollection at the expense of security. Combining the uniqueness of physiological measures, such as brainwave patterns, with memorable augmented passwords shows the promise of providing a secure and memorable authentication process. In this paper, we discuss authentication and related problems and considerations in literature. We then test a password system designed to make use of character property transformations such as color and font to minimize the need for complex passwords while not compromising security. The findings from this study suggest that applying transformations to passwords facilitates memorability. We then discuss a study to combine an augmented password system with physiological measures that can provide a more secure model for continuous authentication.