Security in Computing 5th Edition by Shari Lawrence Pfleeger, Charles P Pfleeger, Jonathan Margulies

Exercise 9

False positive and false negative rates can be adjusted, and they are often complementary: Lowering one raises the other. List two situations in which false negatives are significantly more serious than false positives.

Step 1 of 2

False negative authentication

False positive rate is the situation when an unauthenticated user identity is accepted, which should have been rejected while the false negative rate is the situation when the authenticated user is rejected when it should have be accepted. False positive and false negative are the complementary situation. They share an inverse relation, so as the rate of false positive authentication increases, the rate of false negative authentication decreases and vice versa.