Years in the making, the United Kingdom is now the epicenter of implementation for Intelligent Authentication (IAuth). Barclays got the ball rolling last May with the roll-out of passive, voice-based caller authentication to clients of the Barclays Wealth services. Since then the company has pursued plans to expand its implementation of simple, voice-based authentication to its entire customer base (around 19 million account holders). Last month, HSBC’s and first direct bank announced a roll-out of biometric security to their 15 million customers, combining fingerprints with voice to assure its  clients of simple, secure mobile access.

Now TalkTalk, a provider of “quadruple play” communications and entertainment services, announced that it is implementing a system that enables its subscribers to use their voice to speed up secure access to its automated service lines. Not only does it have the potential to add nearly 5 million individuals to the community of customers who have enrolled for voice-based authentication, it also expands the voice-based revolution into the telecommunications domain. Coverage in the British business press quickly jumped to the conclusion that the move is in direct response to a sustained cyber-attacks that exposed TalkTalk’s customer data to criminals in 2015. Indeed, security is a major part of the equation when selecting customer authentication technologies and procedures.

Yet, in this case, voice log-in is something that TalkTalk had been evaluating and testing for a number of years: dating back to the days prior to the data breach. At the time improving customer experience and satisfaction was the major consideration, balancing security with convenience was the ideal.

The system relies on VocalPassword from Nuance Communications. By saying ““With TalkSafe, my voice is my password,” callers gain immediate, secure access to phone-based customer care services. Use of voice biometrics by diversified telecommunications companies is starting to proliferate in large increments. The movement can be traced to Turkey where Turkcell and Vodafone Turkey are collectively responsible for enrolling more than 20 million subscribers. T-Mobil in Poland and Vodacom in South Africa have instituted similar systems and have enrolled a few more million.

In the UK, the growth of enrollments by TalkTalk cutomers is growing exponentially and, if past is prologue, puts the company on track to protect 80% of its subscribers. Telcos are finding that different forms of voice biometrics fit into both their customer authentication and and their fraud prevention playbooks. Like financial institutions, they have a number of risk analytic and fraud prevention tools at their disposal to detect criminals and prevent fraud. But these technologies customarily operate “in the background” and are not part of a marketing story.

TalkTalk’s very public rollout of voice authentication has positive effects that are two-fold. It tells its customers that their security is important and that they are employing a technology that takes away the cognitive load of remembering passwords while, at the same time, speeding up transactions without sacrificing security. Enrollment efforts are also bound to be bolstered by the high-profile rollout of IAuth services involving voice and other factors by the likes of HSBC and Barclays.

IAuth is not an oddity anymore, it is becoming fundamental to simple, secure, personal digital commerce.

Categories: Intelligent Authentication

Tags: Mobile CX, TalkTalk, Voice biometrics, Nuance Communications, mobile security