User Security Issues in Summative E-Assessment Security

Abstract

Summative electronic assessments embodies enormous advantages such as automated marking, immediate feedback and on-demand tests. User security plays a vital role in summative e-assessments, as it ensures that online tests are delivered to the correct students only. Thus, the existing user security model presents a two-layered challenge to the student; whereby responses to "who are you?" and "is it really you?" questions are solicited. Amidst the usefulness of the existing model, summative e-assessments are susceptible to impersonation challenges. In this paper, we classify the user security concerns into Type A, Type B and Type C impersonation types. We suggest that these vulnerabilities can be linked to a weakness in the user security model. Hence, without discarding the existing model we propose a goal-oriented approach to address the user security needs of the e-assessment system. Furthermore, a review of the existing solutions depicts insufficient capabilities to minimise all the three types of impersonation challenges. Hence, we propose that an appropriate blend of existing methods will minimise the types of impersonation threats and improve user security in summative e-assessments