Using Fingerprint Authentication to Reduce System Security: An Empirical Study

Choosing the security architecture and policies for a system is a demanding task that must be informed by an understanding of user behavior. We investigate the hypothesis that adding visible security features to a system increases user confidence in the security of a system and thereby causes users to reduce how much effort they spend in other security areas. In our study, 96 volunteers each created a pair of accounts, one secured only by a password and one secured by both a password and a fingerprint reader. Our results strongly support our hypothesis— on average. When using the fingerprint reader, users created passwords that would take one three-thousandth as long to break, thereby potentially negating the advantage two-factor authentication could have offered.