Voice Biometrics - Phone Banking & ATM Security Application

Achieving Customer Satisfaction through Implementation of Voice Biometrics


Voice authentication has a number of advantages. The cost of implementation is low because there is no special hardware required. A simple telephone or microphone is all that a user needs to authenticate using her voice. Other methods of biometric authentication like fingerprinting and retinal scans require special devices.


Voice authentication is easy to use and easily accepted by users. It is quite natural to speak. It is not as natural to put an eye up to a reader. The concept of identifying people by voices is also quite natural. Every time someone answers a telephone call, the natural instinct is to try to identify the caller by his voice.


Perhaps most important to the future of voice biometrics is that it is the only biometric that allows users to authenticate remotely. Allowing a user to call a phone number and authenticate with her bank vocally to perform a transaction is much easier than asking the user to go to the bank in person and authenticate
via fingerprint.


It is quick to enroll in a voice authentication system. The user is asked to speak a certain set of words or phrases, or to speak for a certain length of time. From that sample, a digital representation of the voice, called a voiceprint, is created. A good voiceprint is between 2-8 seconds of speech.


Authenticating a user is accomplished by comparing the voiceprint that was created at enrollment to a sample given when the user wants to enter the restricted area or system. Authentication is very fast; it can be completed in 0.5 seconds.

Another advantage is that the storage size of the voiceprint is small. How small it is will be vendor specific, but one vendor, Voice Security Systems, states that a user’s voice print is less than 1K in size.This is so small that it can be stored almost anywhere: smart cards, floppy disks, databases, even on cell phones.


Banking
Reducing crime at Automated Teller Machines is an ongoing struggle. Banks have started using biometrics to authenticate users before allowing ATM transactions. Users generally must provide a pin number and a voice sample to be allowed access. Royal Canadian Bank is using voice authentication to allow access to telephone banking.