Behavioral Authentication for Security and Safety

Abstract: The issues of both system security and safety can be dissected integrally from the perspective of behavioral \emph{appropriateness}. That is, a system is secure or safe can be judged by whether the behavior of certain agent(s) is \emph{appropriate} or not. Specifically, a so-called \emph{appropriate behavior} involves the right agent performing the right actions at the right time under certain conditions. Then, according to different levels of appropriateness and degrees of custodies, behavioral authentication can be graded into three levels, i.e., the authentication of behavioral \emph{Identity}, \emph{Conformity}, and \emph{Benignity}. In a broad sense, for the security and safety issue, behavioral authentication is not only an innovative and promising method due to its inherent advantages but also a critical and fundamental problem due to the ubiquity of behavior generation and the necessity of behavior regulation in any system. By this classification, this review provides a comprehensive examination of the background and preliminaries of behavioral authentication. It further summarizes existing research based on their respective focus areas and characteristics. The challenges confronted by current behavioral authentication methods are analyzed, and potential research directions are discussed to promote the diversified and integrated development of behavioral authentication.