Systems and methods for determining an authentication attempt threshold
View Patent ↗Systems and methods are provided for determining an authentication attempt threshold. Authentication systems often have predetermined authentication attempt thresholds that may not be sufficient for some users and do not necessarily provide any increased security. Systems and methods provided for determining an authentication thresholds described herein may determine the authentication threshold based on certain factors in a user's authentication attempt history that may provide information about a user's probability of a successful authentication to provide additional security for users more likely to successfully authenticate while providing additional assistance to users who may be less likely to successfully authenticate.
1. An authentication system, comprising:
a non-transitory memory; and
one or more hardware processors coupled to the non-transitory memory and configured to read instructions from the non-transitory memory to cause the system to perform operations comprising:
receiving an authentication request from a user;
accessing an authentication attempt history for the user;
identifying a sequence of authentication attempts in the authentication attempt history, the sequence of authentication attempts occurring over a predetermined amount of time;
determining a length of time since a most recent successful authentication attempt by the user;
determining an estimate of a probability of successful authentication based on a function that computes a ratio of the length of time since the most recent successful authentication and a product of a number of successful authentications in the sequence of authentication attempts and a number of successful authentications in the authentication attempt history;
determining an authentication attempt threshold based on the probability;
determining whether the authentication request is successful; and
when the authentication request is not successful:
increasing a count of a number of failed authentication attempts; and
performing a security action when the count equals the authentication attempt threshold.
2. The system of claim 1 , wherein the authentication request is received from a user device of the user in communication with the system over a network.
3. The system of claim 1 , wherein the authentication request includes credentials associated with the user.
4. The system of claim 1 , wherein the predetermined amount of time corresponds to a time interval of relevance to the probability of successful authentication.
5. A non-transitory machine-readable medium having stored thereon instructions executable to cause a machine to perform operations comprising:
receiving an authentication request from a user;
accessing an authentication attempt history for the user;
identifying a sequence of authentication attempts in the authentication attempt history, the sequence of authentication attempts occurring over a predetermined amount of time;
determining a length of time since a most recent successful authentication attempt by the user;
determining an estimate of a probability of successful authentication based on a function that computes a ratio of the length of time since the most recent successful authentication and a product of a number of successful authentications in the sequence of authentication attempts and a number of successful authentications in the authentication attempt history;
determining an authentication attempt threshold based on the estimate of probability;
determining whether the authentication request is successful; and
when the authentication request is not successful:
increasing a count of a number of failed authentication attempts; and
performing a security action when the count equals the authentication attempt threshold.
6. The machine-readable medium of claim 5 , wherein the authentication request is received from a user device of the user in communication with the machine over a network.
7. The machine-readable medium of claim 6 , wherein the authentication request includes credentials associated with the user.
8. The machine-readable medium of claim 5 , wherein the predetermined amount of time corresponds to a time interval of relevance to the probability of successful authentication.
9. The machine-readable medium of claim 5 , wherein performing the security action comprises locking the user out of an account.
10. An authentication system, comprising:
a non-transitory memory; and
one or more hardware processors coupled to the non-transitory memory and configured to read instructions from the non-transitory memory to cause the system to perform operations comprising:
receiving an authentication request from a user;
accessing an authentication attempt history for the user;
identifying a sequence of authentication attempts in the authentication attempt history, the sequence of authentication attempts occurring over a predetermined amount of time;
determining a length of time since a most recent successful authentication attempt by the user;
determining an estimate of a probability of successful authentication based on a function that subtracts a first constant times a number of successful authentications in the sequence of authentication attempts and a second constant times a number of successful authentications in the authentication attempt history from the length of time since the most recent successful authentication;
determining an authentication attempt threshold based on the estimate of the probability;
determining whether the authentication request is successful; and
when the authentication request is not successful:
increasing a count of a number of failed authentication attempts; and
performing a security action when the count equals the authentication attempt threshold.
11. The system of claim 10 , wherein the authentication request is received from a user device of the user in communication with the system over a network.
12. The system of claim 10 , wherein the authentication request includes credentials associated with the user.
13. The system of claim 10 , wherein the predetermined amount of time corresponds to a time interval of relevance to the probability of successful authentication.
14. The system of claim 10 , wherein performing the security action comprises locking the user out of an account.
15. The system of claim 1 , wherein performing the security action comprises locking the user out of an account.