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Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 17:07:47 -0400
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From: "R.A. Hettinga"
Subject: [Clips] Say Hello to Voiceprinting
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http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB114495589656625392.html
The Wall Street Journal
MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW
Say Hello to Voiceprinting
Voice biometrics is poised to add more security
to phone-based transactions in Europe.
By DUNCAN GRAHAM-ROWE
April 14, 2006
Speech-recognition software is used today by banks and other institutions
to conduct customer transactions over the phone without the need for a live
customer-service representative. But such systems recognize mainly numbers
and words, not individual voices. If you utter the right PIN and account
number, you get through.
Now a system being readied for commercialization in Europe treats an
individual's voice as the gate-opener. That capability would add another
security layer: While your PIN can be compromised, your voice is not so
easily stolen. It could also eliminate the need to remember and recite
account numbers and PINs.
Owned by Surrey, U.K.-based Biometric Security, the system, called Voice
Vault, requires users simply to utter their name, birth date, and a
password, says Chief Technology Officer Vance Harris. The company, like
others in the field, already has a handful of banks as clients, who use
"voiceprinting" for internal security purposes. But Voice Vault's system
will be made available to general account holders at an undisclosed
European bank by December, says Mr. Harris.
The system will require a user to remember a minimal amount of information,
while relying instead on that person's voice for authentication. First,
customers "register" their voices in a training session that involves
saying words designed to capture the frequencies associated with their
voice. The system then constructs a statistical model that predicts what a
speech waveform would look like when the person is uttering an entirely
novel sentence.
Then, when that person's account is accessed over a phone, the system not
only confirms that the articulated name, birth date, and password are
accurate, but also checks to see if the waveforms of those utterances match
the template stored with the account.
Such modeling of the vocal tract is a popular approach these days for voice
verification, says Aladdin Ariyaeeinia, a voice researcher at the
University of Hertfordshire, England. Indeed, many companies are developing
similar systems.
Much farther in the future is so-called "text independent" identification,
which would be so good at recognizing individual voices that you'd merely
call your bank and say "What's my balance?" without having to give any
other information.
Voiceprints have some over other biometrics too. Mr. Ariyaeeinia notes that
while some banks are now looking at using more established forms of
biometrics for online banking -- fingerprints and iris scans -- these
require additional hardware to perform the scans.
"The great advantage of voice is that all computers and phones have the
sensor built in, whereas other biometrics require additional sensors," says
Mike Brookes, a signal-processing researcher at the Imperial College of
Science, Technology, and Medicine in London, who specializes in voice
recognition. And, he adds, voice recognition also allows you to keep your
hands free.
"Voice has been on the verge of breaking through for a number of years,"
says Mr. Brookes. He believes voice verification technology will finally
start to take off, particularly with telecommunication and cellphone
companies, who are keen to push e-commerce services via Internet-enabled
cellphones.
Another reason for the adoption of voiceprinting is the recent introduction
of so-called "smart" credit and debit cards. These cards have eliminated
the use of handwritten signatures for authenticating payments, and instead
require customers to punch in a four-digit PIN, which is then verified
against a number stored on a chip on the card.
Since the recent mass introduction of these PIN-verified cards in the U.K.,
for example, most types of credit-card fraud have plummeted. According to
figures released in February by the U.K.'s Association for Payment Clearing
Services, credit-card fraud dropped by 13% in 2005.
But one type of fraud continued to rise last year, by 21%: The problem lies
in transactions made over the Internet, by phone, or by mail order. In
these kinds of transactions, a card's information can be read out or typed
in without additional authentication. The field of biometrics, in general,
and voiceprinting, in particular, could go a long way toward solving this
problem, Mr. Harris says.
This article appeared April 11, 2006, on the Web site of Technology Review,
an MIT Enterprise.
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R. A. Hettinga
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
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--
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'