A Faceted Classification of Authenticator-Centric Authentication Techniques
Abstract
Authentication is a fundamental security means for protecting system resources. Authenticator-centric authentication techniques (AuthN Techniques) address how mechanisms and credentials are used via Authenticators. There are many AuthN Techniques that differ in many ways and there exist classification approaches that aim to structure them. However, they are limited in the aspects they classify and are not flexible enough to accommodate the diverse nature of AuthN Techniques. This paper presents two contributions. First, novel, faceted classification schemes for AuthN Techniques and Authenticators are presented. The schemes were developed based on 345 papers identified through a targeted LLM-assisted literature review and semantic clustering. The classification schemes were applied to build a catalog of Authenticators and AuthN Techniques; the second contribution of this paper. This paper presents our methodology, the classification schemes with example applications, the list of AuthN Techniques from the catalog, and discussions on future work.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2604.03627,
title = {A Faceted Classification of Authenticator-Centric Authentication Techniques},
author = {Alex R. Mattukat and Vincent Schmandt and Timo Langstrof and Michael Zerbe and Horst Lichter},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.03627},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
This is the accepted version of a paper that will appear in the proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches of Software Engineering (ENASE 2026). The final published version will be available from Science and Technology Publications (SCITEPRESS). 13 pages, 4 tables, 4 Figures