Behavioral biometrics researchers awarded $250k National Science Foundation grant

Three professors at Clarkson University have been awarded a $250,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to prototype advanced behavioral biometrics-based computer user authentication to tackle online fraud, announces Clarkson University.

Recipients of the Partnership for Innovation (PFI), Mahesh Banavar, Stephanie Schuckers and Hou Daqing, are all electrical and engineering professors at Clarkson. Their project “PFI-TT: Behavior-Based Account Recovery, Trust Assessment, and Continuous Authentication for Strengthening Online Identity,” develops software for online fraud detection and prevention based on behavioral biometrics gathered on an individual.

The team will collaborate with industry partners to evaluate the commercial prospects of the developed prototype.

“This PFI award provides us with an excellent opportunity to translate nearly a decade of our basic research in behavioral biometrics into demonstration systems, so that we can further explore its potential commercial and societal benefits in offering secure and frictionless user authentication,” says Hou Daqing, the project’s principal investigator and Professor and Director of Software Engineering.

The project’s abstract states that US consumers lose $5.1 billion annually to account takeover fraud and online shopping is the most risky.

Behavioral biometrics are seeing a surge in market activity as companies improve their offerings, raise funds and gain recognition.

Article Topics

authentication  |  behavioral biometrics  |  biometrics  |  biometrics research  |  Clarkson University  |  cybersecurity  |  fraud prevention  |  national science foundation