Bridging the Gap Between Usability and Security: Cultural Adaptation of a Graphical User Authentication

Abstract

Authentication tasks are becoming more important, since these tasks are performed daily by millions of users across diverse cultures that share distinct characteristics and behaviors. Alphanumerical password authentication is often criticized because of its memorability issues. Thus, graphical passwords, which require users to select images as their password, have been proposed to increase memorability and ease the user authentication process. However, graphical passwords are globalized without considering that people from distinct cultures understand and interact with technologies differently. Culturally familiar graphical passwords allow the user to select pictures that relate to his cultural background. Such passwords exhibit a higher level of memorability, and leverage humans’ cognitive strengths.

This paper reports the finding of an investigation of the effect of cultural elements on graphical password usability. A pilot study was conducted with thirty-four participants to examine the usability impact of culture on a customized graphical user authentication application. Two groups of participants were part of the study, namely Cameroonian and American users. Participants were asked to create a graphical password with the option of selecting cultural related images as opposed to non-related cultural images. Data gathered was used to measure the correlation between cultural related images and memorability and user preferences. The results showed that cultural elements are well considered as factors that influence password choices and the memorability of users during the registration and the authentication process. Findings underpin the necessity to consider cultural differences in the design of graphical password authentications, to enhance usability features and strengthened security.