A Secure Usability Design System for User Authentication

The term usable authentication is been brought about as a result of issues surrounding user memorabiilty. Computer users find it less easy to memorize plain text password compared to images or graphics. Researchers have over the years presented several authentication schemes in an effort to provide users with a usable and yet secure authentication system. Authentication and usability are two important terms that to a large extent determines how good a security system is. Secure systems are often needed in many organizations to keep privacy, ensure data safety, among many others. Though it is a necessity for such systems to be very secure but one thing often neglected by most developers is the user. When a system is too secure that it often leads to circumventing of the system by the users, then such a system is not usable. This paper takes a close look at how usability and authentication can be balanced with the use of graphical passwords by presenting an authentication system that combines the use of text based password and graphics based password. The combined strengths of these schemes present computer users with a secure yet usable authentication scheme.