A New Approach to Mobile Device Authentication

The effectiveness of primary and secondary authentication systems on mobile devices leaves room for improvement. Device manufacturers provide security features which require users to memorize long, complex passwords and/or provide biometric information. These approaches have drawbacks which make their continued usage untenable. Users are already inundated with passwords and regularly forget answers to security challenges. People are growing resistant to sharing their biometrics with device manufacturers. An authentication solution which overcome these limitations are essential. This research addresses this need by proposing a new method for mobile device authentication. First, it reviews past and current approaches to authentication. It then identifies design goals for future mobile device authentication systems. Finally, it describes a new model for backup mobile device authentication. The proposed model integrates video with social authentication for asynchronous secondary verification.