PFI-TT: Behavior-Based Account Recovery, Trust Assessment, and Continuous Authentication for Strengthening Online Identity

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Partnerships for Innovation - Technology Translation (PFI-TT) project is in the online fraud detection and prevention for large populations of users in different industries such as healthcare, credit card processing or retail banking business. The proposed project involves the prototyping of a novel software for online fraud detection and prevention based on behavioral biometrics. US consumers lose $5.1 billion annually due to account takeover fraud and online shopping presents the greatest fraud risk. There is strong demand for online fraud detection in sectors such as e-commerce and financial services. This project includes an entrepreneurial education and leadership development plan for the graduate students in the team, that will include customer discovery activities, mentorship from experienced entrepreneurs in the biometrics business area, and innovation and entrepreneurship activities at the Center for Identification Technology Research (CITeR), a NSF Industry University Collaborative Research Center (IUCRC). Broadening participation activities include supporting underrepresented graduate students and providing research opportunities for undergraduate students from diverse groups. The proposed project involves the prototyping of a novel software solution framework for online fraud detection and prevention that is based on behavioral biometrics. The software framework systematically integrates options for prevention via account recovery, trust assessment of universal identities, and detection via post-login authentication. The team will also explore the design and implementation of innovative features/solutions for intellectual property and user privacy protection, two deployment options, and additional post-login authentication features paving the way for integrating behavioral biometrics and post-login authentication into enterprise systems. Finally, usability considerations including end-user evaluation of behavioral biometrics in security critical scenarios that matter the most to consumers will be explored. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.