Biometric and Traditional Mobile Authentication Techniques: Overviews and Open Issues Reham Amin*, Tarek Gaber, Ghada ElTaweel*, and Aboul Ella Hassanien *Faculty of Computers and Informatics, Suez Canal University, Ismailia, Egypt Faculty of Computers and Informatics, Suez Canal University, and SRGE Group, Ismailia, Egypt Faculty of Computers and Information Science, Cairo University, and SRGE Group, Cairo, Egypt {reham_amin@ci.suez.edu.eg, {tmgaber@gmail.com, {ghada_eltawel@ci.suez.edu.eg, aboitcairo@gmail.com} Abstract. Currently, mobile smartphone devices contain a critical and sensitive data. In addition, they provide access to other data, on cloud for exammple, and to services somewhere on the Internet. Mobile au- thentication aims to protect against unauthorized access The current operating systems of mobile smartphones offer different authentication mechanisms. Nonetheless, in some situations, these mechanisms are vul- nerable and in other situations, they are not user friendly enough, thus not widely adopted. In this chapter, we will give an overview of the current mobile authentication mechanisms: traditional and biometric, and their most commonly used techniques in the mobile authentication environment. In addition, the pro and cons of these techniques will be highlighted. Moreover, a comparison among these techniques will be con- ducted. The chapter also discuss the other techniques which could much suitable for the current environment of the mobile applications. Further- more, it discuss a number of open issues of the mobile authentication which needs further research in the future to improve the adoption of the biometric authentication in the smartphones environment. 1 Introduction Mobiles are considered the largest market portion. Mobile phone has become incredible device which can be used for various tasks including telephony, multi- networking, entertainment, business functions, computing and multimedia. In other words, mobile devices are being used worldwide, not only for commu- nication purposes, but also for personal affairs and for processing information obtained anywhere at any time. In [1], Tesng et al have reported that more than 4 billion users are using mobile phones around the world. They also expected