Remember Life magazine? (If you’re under 30 years old, chances are you don’t.) Its parent company, Time Inc., developed one of the best lines in advertising history: “Life… Consider the alternative!” This bold promotional message equated any upstart picture magazine competing with Life with the grim prospect of Death.

This verbal bravado led me to a similar tag line for the : “Voice. Consider the alternatives!” In reality people already have. Thousands of enterprises around the world already deploy alternative methods for authenticating customers or identifying imposters. The good news is that many of these firms have considered voice biometric-based alternatives and hundreds (if not thousands) now use speaker verification in addition to existing solutions.

The “A” List of Alternatives
All companies that accept payments over the Web or over the phone have implemented a variety of systems and services to combat increases in consumer and financial fraud. The most common alternatives involve personal identification numbers (PINs). They are Chip & PIN, PIN & Password and PIN & ANI. All rely on four-digit numbers matched with another factor to minimize identity fraud. In practice, they are deemed “adequate” for their task; however industry participants and regulators are constantly looking for ways to heighten security to meet new threats.

Today it includes other biometrics (such as iris or retinal scans, fingerprints vein patterns or “keystroke dynamics”); one-time passwords (OTP), which often rely on physical tokens; and knowledge-based authentication (KBA) using challenge questions from publicly known info or customer provided preferences. End-to-end solutions incorporate “out-of-band” authentication (such as a separate, outbound phone call), custom-made scanners and even the use of SMS/text messaging.

Hoops and Flaming Hoops
The basic function of these technologies is “identity proofing” and authentication. Billions of dollars are being spent each year by payment card issuers, banks and brokerages, healthcare providers, insurance companies and virtually any company or government entity that accepts payments or distributes funds or information on a targeted basis. Authentication is necessitated to insure that individuals are who they claim to be. Catalogue wine merchants, for instance, must make sure their customers are of an age and in a location that makes it legal for them to receive alcoholic substances. Pharmacies should make sure that the person renewing a prescription over the telephone is the individual to whom a medication is meant. Government agencies issueing “transfer payments” require proof that the recipient is alive, present and eligible for the benefit in question.

Each of these ‘use cases’ necessitates that customers have certain hoops to jump through. In high-value or high-risk situations, those hoops should be flaming ones. Today’s solutions lean hard on existing security infrastructure, but its first-order concern is detection of malware, spyware and other attacks on the corporate network. They care more about the bad that is being done, not the “bad guys” who are perpetrating it. Identification of imposters for the purpose of fraud prevention is another matter, in the time it takes to swipe a card and enter a PIN, high-speed networks can verify that the card has not been stolen and serve up the raw material for a series of “challenge questions” that are designed to reduce the probability of fraud to zero.

Finding a Fit for Voice Biometrics
Businesses and government agencies spend billions of dollars each year to prevent untold millions (or perhaps billions) of dollars in fraudulent transactions. The overall question we’ll be addressing at is “Do voice biometric solutions fit among the pantheon of fraud prevention solutioins?” “We have already observed that the answer is “yes.” Hundreds of firms and government agencies have already implemented speaker verification systems for verification of identity as part of password reset routines, for secure access to customer care contact centers, for identity authentication in crime prevention scenarios and as electronic signatures for phone based transactions and document validation.

In each instance, voice biometric “engines” are integrated with business rules, databases and the other physical and logical elements that comprise security infrastructure. Today, as the volume of mobile payments and phone-based transactions crescendos across multiple vertical industries and government agencies, the need for reliable, real-time identity proofing also increases.

System Integrators and solutions providers have come to the same conclusion – as evidenced by participation in Voice Biometrics Conference London 2008 that goes far beyond the community of biometric technology providers. Opus Research is featuring thought leaders in banking and financial services, payments solutions, security and forensics experts and system integrators, highlighted speakers:

• Colin Whittaker (Head of Security, APACS) offers his perspective on the urgency to develop secure payment authentication solutions and discusses alternative approaches to fraud prevention among a panel of banking executives.
• Dave Birch (Editor, Digital Identity Forum blog) will focus on the positioning of voice biometrics and other technologies for both access control and ID management.
• Tim Best (Director of Security Solutions, Logica) discusses the opportunity for voice biometric technologies to leverage existing security infrastructure.
• David Attwater (Senior Scientist, Enterprise Integration Group) leads a session on designing call flows to promote ease-of-use from a user enrolment perspective.
• Information specialists from Experian will explain why they incorporate their data and processing resources to support easy to use verification applications.
• Plus, you’ll here spirited debate of the major issues confronting both security managers and user experience specialists.

Consider the Alternatives?
That’s the whole idea at Voice Biometrics 2008, because no single solutions provides the level of security, convenience, mobility and comfort that the combination of voice biometrics and existing security solutions will provide. And no other venue will provide you with the knowledge you’ll need to implement multifactor, multimodal security applications successfully.

For more information:

Early-Bird Registration ends Sept. 15th —

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