King Saud University (KSU), Riyadh, has made a major breakthrough of patenting digital authentication, an important technique to support e-business applications such as online banking, e-commerce and cyber-security.

“KSU earned the US patent entitled “Systems and Methods for Three-Factor Authentication” under US patent number 8, 862, 888,” a media coordinator at KSU said here on Thursday.

He informed that the inventors of this patent are researcher Ahmed S Tolba, associate professor Muhammad Khurram Khan and Professor Khaled S Alghathbar. This research was led by Khan at the Center of Excellence in Information Assurance (CoEIA) KSU, he added.

Commenting on the new research finding Khan said: “Use of multi-factor authentication techniques based on something you know (user ID and passwords), something you have (smartphone or smart card) and something you are (bio-metrics like fingerprint, voice and face) are secure ways of authenticating subjects and our invention uses these three factors for securing the information systems.”

He further explained that with the increasing popularity of handheld devices such as smartphones, “our approach can be leveraged by many organizations without urging the user to memorize different passwords or carrying several devices.”

The main components to use in this invention are a smartphone, a remote authentication server and a bio-metric service provider for voice recognition, he added.

“The objective of our invention is to show that the user can easily authenticate himself to the service provider using his mobile phone and voice bio-metrics. Our scheme not only overcomes the problems of other traditional authentication schemes, but also provides interactive, secure, and strong information systems by using three factors of authentication,” he noted.

He further informed that this invention has won a Gold Medal in the ‘Malaysian Technology Expo,’ a well-reputed invention and innovation expo held every year in Kuala Lumpur, and received high recommendations by security researchers of digital authentication technology.