Securing Access to Internet of Medical Things Using a Graphical-Password-Based User Authentication Scheme

Abstract

Digital healthcare services have seen significant growth in this decade and many new technologies have been thoroughly examined to provide efficient services through secure infrastructures. The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) revitalizes a healthcare infrastructure by creating an interconnected, intelligent, accessible, and efficient network. While there have been many studies on possible device authentication techniques for the IoMT, there is still much work to be done in user authentication to provide sustainable IoT solutions. Graphical passwords, which use visual content such as images instead of traditional text-based passwords, can help users authenticate themselves. However, current schemes have limitations. Therefore, this paper proposes a novel graphical authentication scheme that uses multiple factors to register and authenticate users using simple arithmetic operations, machine learning for hand gesture recognition, and medical images for recall purposes. The proposed method is designed to keep the authentication process simple, memorable, and robust. To evaluate the proposed scheme, we use the Post-Study System Usability Questionnaire (PSSUQ) to compare it with PIN-based and pattern-based authentication techniques. While comparing treatment and comparison groups, system quality showed a 16.7% better score, information quality a 25% increase, interface quality a 40% increase, and overall quality showed a 25% increase. The proposed method successfully revitalizes the use of graphical passwords, specifically in the field of IoMT, by developing a user-friendly, satisfying, and robust authentication scheme.