Quantifying the effect of graphical password guidelines for better security

Abstract

Authentication using images or graphical passwords is one of the possible alternatives for traditional authentication based upon passwords. This study aims to investigate the practicality of giving guidelines or advice to users before they start choosing their image passwords, the effectiveness of using a smaller tolerance (clickable areas) and the optimum combination of click and image passwords. An alternative graphical prototype known as the Enhanced Graphical Authentication Scheme (EGAS) was developed in order to achieve these aims which implemented two different types of data collection (internal and external). From the findings, both internal and external groups indicated that the implementation of guidelines alone cannot guarantee the security of image passwords created by participants; but, in combination with other usability measurements this study has shown positive outcomes. © 2011 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.