Technologies for authenticating a user of a computing device based on an authentication context state includes generating context state outputs indicative of various context states of a mobile computing device based on sensor data generated by sensors of the mobile computing device. An authentication manager of the computing device implements an authentication state machine to authenticate a user of the computing device. The authentication state machine includes a number of authentication states, and each authentication state includes one or more transitions to another authentication state. Each of the transitions is dependent upon a context state output. The computing device may also include a device security manager, which implements a security state machine that includes a number of security states. Transition between security states is dependent upon the present authentication state of the user. The device security manager may implement a different security function in each security state.