Voice Authentication

What is voice biometrics?

Voice biometrics, also known as speaker verification or voice authentication relies on unique physical characteristics of an individual’s vocal tract together with behavioral characteristics like accents, speed, pronunciation and emphasis to create a template, or voiceprint, against which verification can be made. Voice biometrics can add a heightened level of security to your IVR transactions in order to reduce fraud and drive customer loyalty.

Why should voice biometrics solutions be considered now?

In an international study commissioned by Unisys Corporation and published in February, 2006, a number of interesting findings were made:

  • Two-thirds of banking customers worldwide worry about identity fraud
  • Almost half of bank account holders worldwide are willing to switch banks for better security protection
  • More than one-third of customers are willing to pay additional bank fees for better security protection

Seeing the obvious need for increased automated authentication strength, the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) has called single-factor authentication “inadequate” and mandating that financial institutions implement multifactor authentication or methods with greater than single-factor strength where “high-risk” transactions are involved.

What unique voice biometrics solutions does First Data offer?

First Data’s voice biometrics solutions build on decades-long corporate emphasis on security, transaction integrity and stability serving the financial institution industry. First Data believes that this unique operational situation provides a strong basis for understanding client needs and delivering robust trustworthy performance.

In addition to this corporate focus, First Data voice biometrics solutions offer the following unique advantages:

  • Leading card activation processor. Processing millions of card activations annually, First Data is uniquely positioned to enroll voice biometric templates. These templates can enhance security for subsequent enrollee access to their accounts.
  • Fraud analytics. First Data voice biometrics solutions integrate best-in-class fraud analytics tested and tuned in real-world scenarios. By leveraging this unique layer as an enhancement to a dual-factor authentication solution, a new level of security strength is achieved.
  • Vendor-independent template storage. First Data stores voice templates in a secure engine-independent format. This frees First Data to provide their clients with best-of-breed text-dependent and text-independent engine performance—rather than tying them to engine choices based on vendor-specific template compatibility. Once ANSI INCITS work on standardization of voice template storage is completed, First Data plans to adopt this template format.

First Data believes that its voice biometrics solutions bring unique and compelling security advantages to your IVR applications.