Using Behavioural Biometrics and Machine Learning in Smart Gadgets for Continuous User Authentication Purposes

Abstract

In the ever-evolving realm of technology, the identification of human activities using intelligent devices such as smartwatches, fitness bands, and smartphones has emerged as a crucial area of study. These devices, equipped with inertial sensors, gather a wealth of data and provide insights into users' movements and behaviors. These data not only serve practical purposes, but also hold significant implications for domains such as healthcare and fitness tracking. Traditionally, these devices have been employed to monitor various health metrics such as step counts, calorie expenditure, and real-time blood pressure monitoring. However, recent research has shifted its focus to leveraging the data collected by these sensors for user authentication purposes. This innovative approach involves the utilization of Machine Learning (ML) models to analyze the routine data captured by sensors in smart devices employing ML algorithms, which can recognize and authenticate users based on their unique movement patterns and behaviors. This introduces a paradigm shift from traditional one-time authentication methods to continuous authentication, adding an extra layer of security to protect users against potential threats. Continuous authentication offers several advantages over its conventional counterparts. First, it enhances security by constantly verifying a user's identity through their interaction with the device, thereby mitigating the risk of unauthorized access. Second, it provides a seamless and nonintrusive user experience, eliminating the need for repetitive authentication prompts. Moreover, it offers robust protection against various threats such as identity theft, unauthorized access, and device tampering. The application of continuous authentication extends beyond individual devices and encompasses interconnected systems and networks. This holistic approach ensures a comprehensive security across digital platforms and services. The experiments demonstrate that the logistic regression model achieves an accuracy of 82.32% on the test dataset, highlighting its robustness for binary classification tasks. Additionally, the random forest model outperforms with a 92.18% accuracy, emphasizing its superior capability in handling complex feature interactions. In the study, the sequential neural network achieved an accuracy of 92% on the HAR dataset, outperforming traditional machine learning models by a significant margin. The model also demonstrated robust generalization capabilities with a minimal drop in performance across various cross-validation folds.