News of an alliance between VoiceTrust and BioID broke at VBC-London: The Voice Security and Authentication Conference. Under its terms, VoiceTrust will be integrating some unique biometric technologies into what it calls an agnostic authentication platform.” As the name VoiceTrust implies, the ten year-old Canadian company had achieved success with voice biometrics at the core of the solutions it had developed for Fortune 500 enterprises in financial services, IT helpdesks, and call centers.

Growth will come from meeting emerging demand for authentication across voice, mobile and online channels. In effect, companies can be assured of authenticity by employing the most appropriate example of  “something you are,” while obviating the need to invoke “something you know,” meaning PINs, Passwords or the answers to “challenge questions.”

As a succession of speakers pointed out at VBC-London, knowledge-based authentication (KBA) is, rightfully, running out of steam. Password management is growing cumbersome and ineffective. At the same time, today’s spectrum of mobile devices ship equipped with an array of sensors, including cameras, microphones, GPS, accelerometers, and touchscreens that make it easy for individuals to use biometrics to make a strong assertions that they are who they claim to be.

VoiceTrust has spent over a decade to develop its voice-centric-yet-agnostic approach to biometric authentication. During that same period, BioID has built an impressive portfolio of cloud-based biometric resources with the ability to bring facial recognition and a unique form of iris-scan into the simple, strong authentication equation. To fulfill on the promise of digital, multichannel commerce companies and service provides must get beyond using basic KBA as the primary mechanism for asserting identity.

At VBC London several speakers brought up this topic in the context of taking a “layered” approach to authentication and establishing trust. While many talked about making authentication “friction-free” (meaning “user friendly”) that objective was amended to reflect the belief that the ease of authentication methods should reflect the riskiness of an interaction or transaction and that, indeed, the best practice is to employ additional factors or modalities as required in relation to the level of risk involved.

Under the terms of the agreement, Canadian-based VoiceTrust will have exclusive rights to resell BioID’s biometric modalities through integration into VoiceTrust’s “agnostic authentication platform.” That brings facial recognition, “periocular” (meaning “around the eyeball”) analysis and iris scans into the mix of capabilities that support both authentication and liveness detection. The company calls this a true multimodal solution and it is very consistent with the marketplace’s expressed need for a simple approach to applying the right amount of friction to secure e-commerce channels.

The alliance takes place as the company moves into the final phases of its formal listing on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Adding more products, services and capabilities to its set of offerings is a brilliant tactic for fostering revenue growth and should have a positive impact the company’s top line and the prospects for bringing voice biometrics into a broader set of market opportunities.

Categories: Intelligent Authentication, Articles

Tags: Voice biometrics, VoiceTrust, Mobile CX, multifactor auth, digital commerce