Eman Abdullah Aldakheel, Mohammed Zakariah
Cybersecurity is the most important and hot research topic, especially at this time. As people are getting more dependent on digital systems and critical and sensitive information’s are stored on these digital devices. There is an advantage of using these devices and gadgets. Still, at the same time, there is a risk of getting attacks on these sensitive files, be it money or essential transaction information for business dealings like customer information for a business. In this study, various security threats have been discussed, mainly for mobile devices. First, the harmful effects of using mobile phones concerning the attacks on these devices have been discussed. After that, authentication techniques are discussed, which show the various methods being applied to safeguard the mobile devices from intruders for malware attacks. There are four authentication techniques discussed in this work: authentication based on information, authentication based on biometrics, authentication based on behavioral, and authentication based on double factor. Each authentication technique is discussed with its advantages and disadvantages. Finally, the importance of machine learning for the detection of malware is discussed. There are various proposed techniques available that are designed using machine learning to fight malware attacks. Some of them are discussed here, which would help a new researcher in getting the proper research direction. At the end, recommendations are listed which can help to save the mobile device users from any attacks. These recommendations are categorized for users, researchers and government authorities.