Risk-Based Adaptive User Authentication for Mobile Passenger ID Devices for Land/Sea Border Control

New services and products are increasingly becoming integral parts of our daily lives rising our technological dependence, as well as our exposure to risks from cyber. Critical sectors such as transport are progressively depending on digital technologies to run their core operations and develop novel solutions to exploit the economic strengths of the European Union. However, despite the fact that the continuously increasing number of visitors, entering the European Union through land-border crossing points or seaports, brings tremendous economic benefits, novel border control solutions, such as mobile devices for passenger identification for land and sea border control, are essential to accurately identify passengers “on the fly” while ensuring their comfort. However, the highly confidential personal data managed by these devices makes them an attractive target for cyberattacks. Therefore, novel secure and usable user authentication mechanisms are required to increase the level of security of this kind of devices without interrupting border control activities. Towards this direction, we, firstly, discuss risk-based and adaptive authentication for mobile devices as a suitable approach to deal with the security vs. usability challenge. Besides that, a novel risk-based adaptive user authentication mechanism is proposed for mobile passenger identification devices used by border control officers at land and sea borders.