Voice biometric-based authentication and security took one step deeper into ‘The Cloud’ as Voxeo and Trade Harbor announced a partnership. Voxeo is a provider of both premises-based and hosted platforms for standards-based interactive voice response (IVR) applications. Trade Harbor launched its efforts to expand the reach of voice-based authentication using a Software as a Service (SaaS) model back in 1999. The two companies are joining forces at a time that Opus Research believes will be looked back on as an inflection point in the adoption voiceprints for customer-facing services offered over the phone.

The partnership puts emphasis on flexibility and speed-to-deploy for applications or services that want to add another factor for user authentication. Voxeo has done an excellent job of constantly adding to the tools and capabilities of its platforms. It attracts new developer/partners by constantly adding new tools, capabilities and APIs (application programming interfaces) to its arsenal.

Even though customer service applications are decidedly multimodal these days (involving the Web, email and even Tweets), more than half of ecommerce culminates in a phone call. During these tough financial times, the need to authenticate callers is more acute than ever. Voxeo’s developer community will find that voice signatures are stronger than a PIN (which can be stolen) and more convenient than the challenge questions that “knowledge-based authentication” schemes insert into the call flow.

Financial service providers, payment processors, telecommunications firms and government agencies have been the first to offer high-volume voice biometric based authentication. We’re looking forward to seeing what the fertile minds of the new generation of phone application developers build the better authentication mousetrap for a broader variety of applications and customer groups.

Categories: Articles

Tags: Voice biometrics, Voxeo, Trade Harbor, On Demand, Cloud Computing, authentication, Voice Self Service