An usability study of continuous biometrics authentication

Abstract

We present an usability study for a bi-modality Continuous Biometrics Authentication System (CBAS) that runs on the Windows platform. Our CBAS combines fingerprint and facial biometrics to authenticate users. As authentication is continuous, CBAS constantly contributes a computational overhead of up to 42% to the computer system. This usability study seeks to investigate (a) whether this overhead will have an impact on the performance of users to complete tasks; and (b) whether the users deem the responsiveness of the system to be acceptable. The results of our study are encouraging, indicating that the runtime cost of a CBAS system has no measurable statistical impact on the task completion by users. We found that user acceptance of CBAS to be good and they did not perceive the CBAS to degrade system response. This suggests that continuous biometrics for authentication is viable - the CBAS benefits outweighs system impact drawbacks. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2009.