Understanding User Perspective in a University Setting to Improve Biometric Authentication Adoption

Personal devices have become equipped with more sophisticated security methods through biometric authentication, which does not require users to memorize passwords and is inherently unique to the user. However, the nature of biometric inputs can lead to privacy and security concerns. Thus, evaluating the user perspective and finding the balance between ease of use, security, and privacy is imperative. To this aid, we conducted a survey-based study collecting data from 38 university students to see how prevalent these security and usability issues were in the everyday usage of personal devices. The survey assessed the user’s technical experience and then asked general device security questions and those specific to the security, privacy, and usability of biometric authentication if they had ever used it. Our results showed that usability is not a significant problem for most users in a university setting and that ease of use is the primary motivator for utilizing this authentication method; however, some users expressed concerns about losing access to the accounts or having incorrect access to their accounts. Thus, we propose design alterations and security measures to address these issues and the concerns about biometric authentication’s security implications.