The first authentication type is authentication by something you know. This method using something that someone knows to authenticate himself/herself. Usually, or mostly all security system use this type of authentication. This method utilize password, pass phrase, personal identification number (PIN), or even challenge response to authenticate someone. Not much differences in these methods all of them use characters or symbols that the user must provide to authenticate himself/herself. Longer and complexe combination of characters or symbols that must be provided make this method of authentication stronger. To put this straight, PIN is the most weak authentication method in this type of authentication because it is only require 4 numbers to authenticate someone. Unfortunately, this method is the one that used in wide range of Banks around the world. Place where we save our money.
Password and pass phrase come in second. This method is stronger than PIN because it utilize characters, numbers, & symbols and not only number like PIN’s. And as you know this method is the most used one nowadays. And the strongest method in this type of authentication is challenge response. Challenge response require the user to answer one or more question to authenticate himself/herself. One of the most popular challenge response method is using Captcha.
“Captcha is a type of challenge response test used in computing as an attempt to ensure that the response is generated by a person. The process usually involves a computer asking a user to complete a simple test which the computer is able to grade. These test are designed to be easy for a computer to generate, but difficult for a computer to solve, so that if a correct solution is received, it can be presumed to have been entered by a human. A common type of captcha requires the user to type letters or digits from a distorted image that appears on the screen, and such test are commonly used to prevent unwanted internet bots from accessing websites”.