US Patent 10405186 Systems and methods for independent multi-challenge multi-level authentication

Embodiments disclosed herein describe multi-challenge, multi-level authentication systems, methods and products. Each authentication challenge may be independent of other challenges and may be associated with a particular network resource or functionality. Counters may track the number of attempts for each authentication challenge and each type of network resource and functionality. Each authentication challenge, network resource, or network functionality may be independently locked and unlocked based on the attempts tracked by the counters. Furthermore, the authentication system may configure the authentication challenges hierarchically, and a higher level challenge may unlock a locked lower level challenge. Therefore, embodiments disclosed herein significantly improve upon the conventional all-in/all-out binary authentication systems and methods.