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Abstract

The continuous digitalization of business and private life drives the need for improved authentication methods. Biometric authentication has emerged as a more secure and user-friendly alternative to traditional authentication methods and gained significant importance over the past decade. With a diverse and growing number of biometric traits used in practice, it is critical to identify the strengths, limitations, and suitable areas of application for each trait to ensure security and maximize user convenience. In current research, most comparative analyses overlook online signature verification despite its familiar and intuitive character due to its adaptation from the analogue world. This dissertation addresses this gap by conducting a comparative analysis of online signature verification as a standalone authentication method, examining its strengths and limitations relative to fingerprint, face, and voice verification. A mixed-method approach was employed to extract and synthesize quantitative and qualitative from 51 studies on online signature verification systems which were identified during a comprehensive literature review. The analysis focuses on three evaluation criteria vital for authentication systems: accuracy, security, and user experience. The study reveals that current online signature authentication achieves an average accuracy of 95-99% and equal error rates (EER) between 0.5-5%, demonstrating its suitability as a standalone authentication for applications outside of a high-security context. Intra-class variations were identified as its greatest challenge which increase the overall system complexity. While online signature verification is outperformed by fingerprint verification in terms of accuracy and user experience, it can compete with face verification and surpasses voice verification in all three evaluated criteria. In conclusion, online signature verification holds significant potential as a standalone authentication method, particularly in e-governance and digital signing processes, and as such can aid in the digitalization of sectors such as finance, healthcare, and academia. Future research should focus on long-term studies in real-life scenarios, the creation of larger datasets, and improving the accuracy of finger-written signature verification.

Course: Cyber security and digital forensics - MSc - P3193PTD

Date Deposited: 2025-02-19

URI/permalink: https://library.port.ac.uk/dissert/dis14694.html