Security Strength Indicator in Fallback Authentication: Nudging Users for Better Answers in Secret Questions

TL;DR

This paper explores a user interface design that provides visual feedback to encourage users to create stronger answers for security questions, aiming to enhance fallback authentication security.

Contribution

It proposes a novel UI approach that uses visual feedback and mnemonics to nudge users towards stronger security question answers.

Findings

Design encourages stronger answers

Visual feedback improves answer quality

Potential for increased fallback security

Abstract

In this paper, we describe ongoing work that focuses on improving the strength of the answers to security questions. The ultimate goal of the proposed research is to evaluate the possibility of nudging users towards strong answers for ubiquitous security questions. In this research we are proposing a user interface design for fallback authentication to encourage users to design stronger answers. The proposed design involves visual feedback to the user based on mnemonics which attempts to give visual feedback to the user on the strength of the answer provided and guide the user to creatively design a stronger answer.