Voice biometrics and voice analytics – the road ahead

The latest authentication technologies bring major security and business benefits says Vim Vithaldas of Datapoint.

Datapoint’s expertise lies in using voice biometrics and analytics to enable security strategies designed to eliminate fraudulent commercial activities such as identity theft, credit card fraud and money laundering. Security services such as the police, Ministry of Defence and border controls also benefit from these technologies by using them for security clearance and tracking the voice component of phone calls and video footage for content analysis and identity verification.

Voice biometrics is unique within the broader family of biometrics technologies in that the person being authenticated does not need to be present for the purpose of identification and verification. The makes it a perfect solution for any organisation that needs to allow employees, partners and customers convenient but secure access to confidential data. For those with the need to develop the highest level of security such as banks, voice biometrics is a key component in striking the right balance between risk and customer convenience.  Speech analytics is another powerful voice based solution that has transformational potential for any organisation that needs to identify and respond to the embedded intelligence usually locked within call recordings that are typically collected in customer service or security environments. Phonetics based speech analytics has the ability to process recordings at extraordinary speed and therefore opens up the opportunity for extensive mining of archival material to pinpoint any combination of keywords that are contained in the voice records.

Voice biometrics and the finance sector
Customers wishing to enquire and obtain information from telephone banking today, have to navigate through multiple passwords and pin numbers. With voice biometrics, not only can we save call centres time and money, we can also ensure customers get access to their accounts efficiently and securely by using their ‘voice’ as a method of security.  However one of the most compelling value propositions in this example is the ability to wipe out identity theft and fraud. Your voice is unique to you and there is no way you can bypass the voice biometric footprint. An annual subscription to such a system costs anything from $1-$10 per year, which enables the system to pay for its self within months.

Voice biometrics and state security
Government and Security business drivers could be:

• Border control & E-Gate
• Stop and search
• Attempts to illegally enter a country
• Entry into Hajj or Umra

The benefits of voice analytics
Our leading voice analytics solution has the ability to index over 38000 hours of Audio within 24 hours. It will allow law enforcement agencies, state security, telcos and call centres to analyse all voice calls in seconds- thus, searching for key words, phrases – taking the operator/agent directly to the point in the conversation where the word/phrase was mentioned. Examples of where this could be used include: to review staff and detect business trends in an enterprise call centre; in a bank to detect why customers are closing accounts; for the purposes of state security where the police have a subject under surveillance, telephone calls can be monitored, indexed and searched for patterns of speech.

Summary
Voice Biometrics can be adopted by organisations wishing for higher levels of security and built around existing applications. Target markets would be  banking, telco/mobile operators; web based payment platforms – working with enterprises, oil and gas and also government.

Voice Analytics is applicable to any organisation wishing to search quickly on key words or phrases in real time that could and would compromise an organisation – both internally and externally. Target markets would be government, telco/mobile operators, finance, airlines, oil and gas, legal or any organisation with high call volumes that rely on contact centres for customer engagement.

Vim Vithaldas is the Chief Executive of Datapoint. He joined the board of Datapoint in 2003 as CFO and became the CEO in 2005. Since then, Vim has grown Datapoint organically and by acquisition whereby it now is one of the largest telephony systems integrators in Europe. Vim has a background in Law and Chartered Accountancy. Prior to joining Datapoint, he was responsible for raising finance in the housing industry.