We’ve received news from Indriya Innovations in Singapore that PT Bank Negara Indonesia (Persero) Tbk (BNI) in Jakarta, Indonesia has completed a pilot and moved to full implementation of a multifactor authentication system that employs voice biometrics for automated password reset.

The move marks a “first” in the Asian financial industry and marks a major step forward for voice biometrics, given that BNI is so well respected and is one of the largest banks in Indonesia. Its deployment validates our observation (reinforced by the the likes of IBM Research), that deployments of voice biometrics globally are accelerating.

BNI, which was founded in 1946, underwent a major rebranding and repositioning in 2004. It now employees 20,000 people and has offices in Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo and London, as well as an agency in New York. In the press release, company spokesperson M. Harsono, (IT Helpdesk & Command Center Group Head) explained that “resetting passwords have often posed challenges for our IT help desk.” He noted that company policy allows only “strong passwords” which consist of “a combination of alphabets, numbers and special characters.” The result is that “BNI users have often forgotten their passwords.”

Thousands of employees from around the country were calling the Help Desk to reset their passwords. This labor-intensive process has been alleviated by the new, Web-based, multifactor password reset application from Indriya Innovations. Requests from the Web portal give rise to an outbound call to one of the phones or IP-based devices that have been registered with the Help Desk. The multifactor solution integrates “something you have” (the phone device), with “something you know” (challenge questions and a series of numbers) and integrates the Nuance Vocal Password biometric engine.

The pilot and initial implementation supports Indonesia’s national language, Bahasa, for the convenience of domestic employees, thus affirming that voice-based authentication can support multiple languages. If adoption runs true to form (as described by IBM and others) password reset apps are the introduction of multifactor authentication that ultimately replaces passwords in a number of use cases, in banking, healthcare, government transfer payments and mobile commerce.
(Updated: Wednesday Jan 4, 2012 8:40 AM Pacific)

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