Voice Biometrics to Address On-Line Banking Fraud

VeCommerce, provisioning intelligent call steering, voice biometric and voice self-service solutions, tells Zalud’s Blog that the financial services industry should consider voice biometrics as a more secure and convenient method of multi-factor authentication for either telephone or on-line banking, compared with existing verification methods. The case for voice biometrics says VeCommerce is further strengthened with the recent introduction of an ISO global standard for deploying biometrics in financial services.

Brett Feldon, General Manager – EMEA at VeCommerce commented, ""Over a quarter of the UK population now regularly uses on-line banking but at the same time fraud continues to increase and criminals are becoming more sophisticated in their attacks. Over the last 12 months many financial institutions have rolled out card readers as a solution for providing second factor authentication for on-line banking customers. However these have several drawbacks. Not only are they expensive to produce but they are costly to support with the continual loss of both passwords and the actual readers themselves. They also do not work ‘out of band’ and are vulnerable to ‘man in the middle’ attacks."

"Not only is there growing pressure on financial institutions to step up security due to the impact of anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism legislation, financial institutions need to safeguard their own customers from the threat of fraud and minimize their own monetary losses. Voice biometrics is now a commercially viable technology and with the new ISO 19092:2008 standard, banks now have an agreed framework and standards that they can use to implement the technology successfully. "

Voice biometrics provides multifactor authentication of an individual's identity through the unique properties of an individual's voice. A voice profile can be used to authenticate both telephone and online transactions and eliminates the need for remembering identifiers such as PINs, passwords, mother's maiden name, etc. or for having special equipment such as PIN pads or fobs. Whilst the latter can be forgotten, lost or stolen, the voice remains consistently unique and convenient to use.

VeCommerce recently attended the American Bankers Association in the US , where they demonstrated their VeVerify voice biometrics solution that provides multifactor authentication in a banking environment. Brett Feldon comments, "The interest was particularly high and we expect some of the American banks to deploy this type of technology shortly."

VeCommerce is also currently working with a number of Australia’s top banks to implement voice biometrics within the next 12 months.