Beyond the PIN: Enhancing user authentication for mobile devices

There is now an increasing need for an enhanced level of user authentication on mobile devices. In this article, Steven Furnell, Nathan Clarke and Sevasti Karazouni begin by examining the existing provision, which is dominated by PIN and password-based approaches. They established that these may be both inconvenient and inadequate for securing modern devices and services. Mobile devices have changed significantly over the last decade, in terms of both their form factor and underlying capabilities. The introduction of third generation (3G) technologies has provided the underlying mechanism for a wide variety of innovative data-orientated services, with approximately one million users every day adopting these new features. 1