Voice Biemetrics

Here is some useful information about Voice Biometrics, in the context of Nuance’s next-generation voice biometric technology.

Nuance is known for Dragon Naturally Speaking software, and is also known for providing technology behind Apple's virtual assistant, Siri.

- Nuance's Voice Biometrics customers include Barclays, T-Mobile etc. and powered more than 100 million voice biometric verifications last year, and it’s also received more than 30 million voiceprints from consumers.

How does Nuance keep the authentication process secure?

- It can detect if someone is trying to authenticate with a recording of your pass-phrase (if the phrase is “uncannily similar” to a previous login) -> there goes the movie Bourne Identify trick out the window then.

- it can detect if there’s a change in the speaker throughout the voice interaction

- with the latest update, Nuance can more effectively detect suspicious behavior (perhaps someone trying to log into multiple accounts very quickly).

This article reminds me of research and technology developed at Carnegie Mellon - this tech generates a series of password like strings based on our voice right on the phone. These strings are probabilistically matched on the server to account for slight day-to-day variations in our voice. This will eliminate the risk of someone stealing our voice password recording and use it to authenticate.