Speaker verification technology is becoming increasingly popular in market sectors such as financial services, healthcare, telephony services, transport and security.
In a 2003 voice authentication consumer survey conducted by US voice technology company Vocent, it was found that the telephone remains one of the primary channels for accessing financial information and transacting. At the same time, consumers are also concerned about disclosing sensitive information over the phone and about the security of their transactions. The survey found that most consumers consider voiceprints to be more secure and convenient than traditional telephone authentication methods. Enter biometrics.
Biometric technologies - including fingerprint recognition, hand geometry, iris recognition, face recognition, signature verification and voice biometrics - identify and verify people through their physiological or behavioural characteristics. They can be used for a variety of applications such as access control, time and attendance, transaction authentication, and criminal and civil identification.
Voice biometrics, like all other biometric technologies, uses the authentication process flow of sample capture, feature extraction, template comparison and matching. Users must first be entered onto the database by creating a reference template of their biometrics features. During the authentication process, the live biometric is matched against the stored template, and a match that meets or exceeds a predetermined security threshold allows the person access to the application. Speaker verification is based on numerous vocal tract characteristics, such as the vocal tract length and geometry of the sinuses.
Compared to other biometric technologies, voice biometrics offers several significant advantages:
* It has the ability to leverage existing infrastructure as telephone networks and handsets are ubiquitous.
* It is intuitive in nature: Because voice biometrics uses the human voice, it is an intuitive and natural technology. It is a natural process for users to authenticate themselves via their voices, and the procedure is not only familiar, but it is also the least invasive and the most unobtrusive of all biometric technologies.
* It is ideal for voice commerce and telephony applications: Voice biometrics can provide remote authentication without requiring the physical presence of the user, making it ideal for call centres and help-desks.
* It is cost-effective: Because it does not require any special hardware, voice biometrics can be instantly deployed and can be used with standard phones and microphones. With no hardware installation and maintenance, the costs of the technology remain low.
* It allows for different permutations of implementation which enhance either user convenience or security: Integration with speech recognition technology enables a single identification and verification process where a caller is verified implicitly in the background while speaking their account details. For additional security, a two-level authentication process is used, validating "something you are" (the caller`s voiceprint) and "something you know" (a secret, language-independent pass-phrase) for a stringent means of verification.
There is little doubt that speaker verification has much to offer the South African market.
Shaun Cochrane, executive director, Intelleca Voice & Mobile.
Voice biometrics implementations are proving to be particularly successful because of the level of additional authentication they offer, which results in a solution that not only automates business processes, but also enhances security by introducing an additional authentication level - compare this to a human agent in a call centre who is able to grant a caller access on the basis of a soft authentication Q&A session based on content knowledge only. In a country like SA, where identity fraud is on the rise, speaker verification is a formidable weapon in the anti-fraud arsenal.
Authentication levels can also be adapted to meet specific requirements for companies with different security thresholds. The result is a solution that automates business processes while enhancing convenience and security for the user, and also minimising the number of calls that have to be put through to a live agent for manual authentication.
This in turn reduces the amount of time that agents have to spend on authenticating callers, as well as reducing the costs associated with the agents in terms of time. Because agents spend less time on routine processes, call centre productivity and efficiency can be enhanced by allowing them to spend their time on more critical business issues.
For callers, time spent on hold is done away with, as there is no need to wait for authentication by a call centre agent. The transaction between callers and the company also becomes more convenient, because the time and irritation associated with question-and-answer sessions is eliminated. A further benefit for customers is that they do not have to give private information to a live agent.
There is little doubt that speaker verification has much to offer the South African market, and that organisations and consumers will embrace the technology and its associated security and convenience benefits as it becomes more widespread.
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