[Clips] Say Hello to Voiceprinting

[R.A. Hettinga]

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  Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 17:07:47 -0400
  To: Philodox Clips List <clips at philodox.com>
  From: "R.A. Hettinga" <rah at shipwright.com>
  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.


  --
  -----------------
  R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
  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 <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
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'