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

Although 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 promote further the comfort of passengers. Nevertheless, the highly sensitive information handled by this type of devices makes them an attractive target for malicious actors. 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 authentication for mobile devices as a suitable approach to deal with the security vs. usability challenge. Besides that, an overview of existing risk estimation approaches – both qualitative and quantitative – is given to provide a foundation for organizing research efforts towards the design and development of proper risk estimation mechanisms for risk-based user authentication for mobile passenger identification devices used by border control officers at land and sea borders.