A strategy for increasing user acceptance of authentication systems: Insights from an empirical study of user preferences and performance

A lack of user acceptance of authentication systems costs organisations money and sometimes deters users from doing their jobs. Despite recent research on the usability of authentication systems, there is little empirical or theoretical understanding of user preferences in authentication systems. This research, based on a comparison of user preferences and performance between alphanumeric passwords and the graphical password, PassFaces™, identifies two user preference factors for authentication systems. There were no significant user performance differences between the two systems. A rank-ordered list of user preferences for usability and security in authentication systems offers organisations potential criteria for evaluating authentication systems.