Voice Biometrics
Two Biometric/Security Vendors known as “Prosodie” and “Persay, Ltd.” have just announced a collaboration in which both, together, will be offering a Voice Biometrics Solution, but it will be on a hosted platform. Essentially, the former Vendor will be adopting and implementing the Voice Biometrics Technologies from the latter Vendor.
The anticipated Market Applications for this Biometrics Solution is expected to be in the areas of financial services (such as placing brokerage trades, transferring money from one account to another, etc.) and for call centers.
Here are some more details: “ “Voice authentication is much more than just a technology". Said François Chaffard, Prosodie’s Strategic Marketing Manager. "When fully integrated in a voice application, it offers a wide range of possibilities to increase the customer satisfaction. We will be using PerSay’s Voice Biometrics technology to enhance security by providing strong, multi-factor authentication, in our voice services as well as to smooth customer identification process by enabling our customers to use simple passwords instead of cumbersome and easily forgettable PINs. We see significant potential for voice-based authentication in the banking and money transfer services arenas".” (SOURCE: http://www.findbiometrics.com/industry-news/i/7449/).
Final Thoughts On Today’s Posting
In the past I have written a couple of Postings with regards to Voice Biometrics, and especially its role as a hosted application. On a much macro level, I think offering Biometric Hosting Services, in a manner which closely parallels web hosting and e-mail hosting, could be a great avenue for Biometrics as well as the Biometrics Vendor to grow into.
For instance, in today’s economy, the smaller to medium sized businesses are trying to keep with ways to improve their Security, both from a physical and logical standpoint. But, cost is a major obstacle, especially in Biometric Systems, when more than one point of entry or more than one computer needs to be fortified.
The Biometric Hosted way could be a strong potential in these kinds of circumstances. For example, all the customer has to do is purchase the Biometric Hardware. All of the software, databases, network connectivity, storage of Biometric Information and Data, the transactions which occur between the Biometric Templates would reside with the ISP (or maybe in this case, would “Biometric Hosting Provider” [“BHP”] be a more appropriate term???).
All the customer would be responsible is making sure that their employees are enrolled properly into the Biometric System. The customer would be able to choose and purchase the Biometric Hosting Plan which works best for them, just like a web hosting or e-mail hosting plan.
However, as good as this idea sounds, there will be several major obstacles which will impede its quick adoption, especially here in the United States. The biggest one will be Privacy Rights once again, and having the Biometric Information and Data, as well as the Biometric Templates outsourced and stored to a third party.
But look at it from this perspective: When a business owner purchases a web hosting plan and creates an online store to go with it, he or she is already submitting private and confidential data by providing credit card information for billing purposes, as well as the confidential data of their customers whom shop at their online store. All of this data is stored at a third party, namely the ISP. So why should people “freak out” by having their Biometric Templates stored in the same manner???
In terms of technical issues, I am sure there will be some, but the biggest one that comes to my thinking right now as I am writing this Posting, is the level of network connectivity between the ISP (or the “BHP”] and the customer. Obviously, very quick Biometric Template processing times and transactions have to occur over the Internet.
Anybody out there have any thoughts or suggestions about the future of the “Biometric Hosting Provider”???
Source for this Posting: http://www.findbiometrics.com/industry-news/i/7449/