More Than Just Good Passwords? A Study on Usability and Security Perceptions of Risk-based Authentication
This research addresses usability and security perceptions for users and developers of authentication systems, providing incremental insights to improve RBA implementations.
The study tackled the problem of evaluating usability and security perceptions of Risk-based Authentication (RBA) compared to 2FA and password-only methods, finding that RBA is considered more usable than 2FA and more secure than passwords, with comparable security to 2FA in various applications.
Risk-based Authentication (RBA) is an adaptive security measure to strengthen password-based authentication. RBA monitors additional features during login, and when observed feature values differ significantly from previously seen ones, users have to provide additional authentication factors such as a verification code. RBA has the potential to offer more usable authentication, but the usability and the security perceptions of RBA are not studied well. We present the results of a between-group lab study (n=65) to evaluate usability and security perceptions of two RBA variants, one 2FA variant, and password-only authentication. Our study shows with significant results that RBA is considered to be more usable than the studied 2FA variants, while it is perceived as more secure than password-only authentication in general and comparably secure to 2FA in a variety of application types. We also observed RBA usability problems and provide recommendations for mitigation. Our contribution provides a first deeper understanding of the users' perception of RBA and helps to improve RBA implementations for a broader user acceptance.