As noted on the VoiceBioCon Web Site in September, VoiceVault launched a major initiative to lure the mobile app developer community to bring voice authentication into their bag of tricks. Yesterday, with this post from Nik Standbridge, Director of Product Marketing, VoiceVault stepped up promotion of its smartphone application developer program.

The company now provides free access to an API (application programming interface) that points to its hosted resource for voice-based authentication. Registered developers can join in discussions in a community forum designed to put them in touch with support personnel at VoiceVault or engage in discussions with other developers.

As constant companions of their owners, smartphones house all sorts of personal information, starting with contact lists and calendars but expanding to include repositories for records of location, messages, photos and input into social networks. What’s more, the phone itself is morphing into an electronic wallet, used to authorize and authenticate money transfers and purchases of goods and services. Given all the new roles for mobile phones, the need for stronger user authentication is glaring. The notion that all this information is protected by entering a four-digit “unlock” code is ludicrous.

Biometric and behavioral identifiers will provide the strongest form of user verification. Since these devices are – first-and-foremost – phones, the use of voice biometrics seems natural. Given that the latest phones also include cameras and resources that gauge location and gestures, it’s easy to see that “voice” the security community may want to mix and match voice, gesture, fingerprint or whatever factor it takes to deliver the level of confidence required to support user verification either transparently or explicitly.

There’s lots of work to be done to define and implement solutions that balance a good user experience with appropriate levels of security. We hope that VoiceVault’s Voice Biometric Smartphone Developer Program attracts participation from a broad spectrum of Web and mobile application developers whose collective creativity will define and re-define a dynamic set of multifactor mobile authentication solutions.

Categories: Articles

Tags: mobile applications, APIs, Developer Support, VoiceVault, Voice biometrics