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Voice Biometrics Conference London 2008

November 13, 2008


At VBC London you'll hear from industry experts, network with peers, and meet with every major voice biometrics solutions provider.

Among the highlighted sessions:

Please join us November 19-20, 2008 at the Hilton London Tower Bridge for VBC London -- Register now!

New Entrant in Battle Against Credit Card Fraud

By Derek Top | October 16, 2008


As economic turmoil rattles global markets and many people face financial uncertainty, one thing's for sure: credit card fraud is not going away. Identity thieves continue to target call centers as weak links, using social engineering techniques and stolen credit card numbers to make fraudulent purchases.

California-based Victrio has developed a voiceprint call screening process to complement current fraud protection systems and help call center agents identify fraudsters. As calls are transparently entered into the system, the technology screens the calls against a database and determines the probability of fraud. If a call is flagged as "surely fraud," the agent can make note and prevent the transaction from being processed.

Tony Rajakumar, founder and CEO of Victrio, says the company's patented system is able to parse up and segment the database of voiceprints to effectively handle a large community of fraudsters. Victrio has launched a trial with a large online retailer to develop a fraud database and is targeting big-ticket online merchants, as well as banks and credit card issuers, as customers.

Stronger Authentication for Mobile Platforms, Conferencing and Collaboration

By Dan Miller | October 9, 2008

Voice Biometrics Conferences have always been the best venue to take stock of the latest developments and implementations of voice biometrics for speaker verification, authentication and identification. On November 19-20 in London, we'll discuss the need for stronger authentication techniques to support fast-growing applications like mobile social networking, electronic payments, conferencing, collaboration and other soon-to-be-routine, phone-based activities.

VBC London 2008 brings together security and identity experts, system integrators, user interface designers, technology providers and customer care specialists to share their insights into the growing use of voice biometric applications.

Among the highlighted sessions:

For more information: VBC London

Register now!

Cellmax Systems Becomes Zehu Technologies

By Derek Top | September 29, 2008


The company formally known as Cellmax Systems announced last week that it has changed its name to Zehu Technologies. The name change coincides with a new business strategy and efforts to attract OEM partners.

Based in Tel Aviv, Israel, Zehu Technologies targets enterprise customers and names Multitek, T3 Teledata, and Softel among it partners.

The company also introduced Zehu Authenticator 3.0 based on its patented biometric Adaptive Speaker Verification technology. "With Authenticator 3.0, we empower application developers with the means to offer their customers the most accurate and reliable speaker verification solution on the market," said Jacob Schwarz, PhD., Zehu CEO, in a statement.

New Perspectives on Voice Biometrics

By Dan Miller | September 10, 2008

Voice Biometrics Conference London 2008 is the only venue dedicated to determining where, why, how and with whom you should deploy speaker verification, speaker identification and other voice-based biometric solutions.

Register Now!

Remember Life magazine? (If you're under 30 years old, chances are you don't.) Its parent company, Time Inc., developed one of the best lines in advertising history: "Life ... Consider the alternative!" This bold promotional message equated any upstart picture magazine competing with Life with the grim prospect of Death.

This verbal bravado led me to a similar tag line for the Opus Research's 2008 Voice Biometrics Conference London: "Voice. Consider the alternatives!" In reality people already have. Thousands of enterprises around the world already deploy alternative methods for authenticating customers or identifying imposters. The good news is that many of these firms have considered voice biometric-based alternatives and hundreds (if not thousands) now use speaker verification in addition to existing solutions.

The "A" List of Alternatives
All companies that accept payments over the Web or over the phone have implemented a variety of systems and services to combat increases in consumer and financial fraud. The most common alternatives involve personal identification numbers (PINs). They are Chip & PIN, PIN & Password and PIN & ANI. All rely on four-digit numbers matched with another factor to minimize identity fraud. In practice, they are deemed "adequate" for their task; however industry participants and regulators are constantly looking for ways to heighten security to meet new threats.

Today it includes other biometrics (such as iris or retinal scans, fingerprints vein patterns or "keystroke dynamics"); one-time passwords (OTP), which often rely on physical tokens; and knowledge-based authentication (KBA) using challenge questions from publicly known info or customer provided preferences. End-to-end solutions incorporate "out-of-band" authentication (such as a separate, outbound phone call), custom-made scanners and even the use of SMS/text messaging.

Hoops and Flaming Hoops
The basic function of these technologies is "identity proofing" and authentication. Billions of dollars are being spent each year by payment card issuers, banks and brokerages, healthcare providers, insurance companies and virtually any company or government entity that accepts payments or distributes funds or information on a targeted basis. Authentication is necessitated to insure that individuals are who they claim to be. Catalogue wine merchants, for instance, must make sure their customers are of an age and in a location that makes it legal for them to receive alcoholic substances. Pharmacies should make sure that the person renewing a prescription over the telephone is the individual to whom a medication is meant. Government agencies issueing "transfer payments" require proof that the recipient is alive, present and eligible for the benefit in question.

Each of these 'use cases' necessitates that customers have certain hoops to jump through. In high-value or high-risk situations, those hoops should be flaming ones. Today's solutions lean hard on existing security infrastructure, but its first-order concern is detection of malware, spyware and other attacks on the corporate network. They care more about the bad that is being done, not the "bad guys" who are perpetrating it. Identification of imposters for the purpose of fraud prevention is another matter, in the time it takes to swipe a card and enter a PIN, high-speed networks can verify that the card has not been stolen and serve up the raw material for a series of "challenge questions" that are designed to reduce the probability of fraud to zero.

Finding a Fit for Voice Biometrics
Businesses and government agencies spend billions of dollars each year to prevent untold millions (or perhaps billions) of dollars in fraudulent transactions. The overall question we'll be addressing at VoiceBioCon London is "Do voice biometric solutions fit among the pantheon of fraud prevention solutioins?" "We have already observed that the answer is "yes." Hundreds of firms and government agencies have already implemented speaker verification systems for verification of identity as part of password reset routines, for secure access to customer care contact centers, for identity authentication in crime prevention scenarios and as electronic signatures for phone based transactions and document validation.

In each instance, voice biometric "engines" are integrated with business rules, databases and the other physical and logical elements that comprise security infrastructure. Today, as the volume of mobile payments and phone-based transactions crescendos across multiple vertical industries and government agencies, the need for reliable, real-time identity proofing also increases.

System integrators and solutions providers have come to the same conclusion - as evidenced by participation in Voice Biometrics Conference London 2008 that goes far beyond the community of biometric technology providers. Opus Research is featuring thought leaders in banking and financial services, payments solutions, security and forensics experts and system integrators, highlighted speakers:

Consider the Alternatives?
That's the whole idea at Voice Biometrics 2008, because no single solutions provides the level of security, convenience, mobility and comfort that the combination of voice biometrics and existing security solutions will provide. And no other venue will provide you with the knowledge you'll need to implement multifactor, multimodal security applications successfully.

For more information: www.voicebiocon.com/vbc-london08/index.asp

U.K.'s O2 Finding Consumer Appeal for Mobile Payments

By Derek Top | September 4, 2008


Using mobile phones to purchase goods and services is a fast-growing concept that is gaining traction from carriers, consumers and payment networks alike. Mobile payments rely on near-field communication (NFC) technology to facilitate purchases and include associated technologies for mobile couponing and payment authentication.

U.K. carrier O2 released the results of a six-month mobile payments trial in which 500 people were given Nokia 6131 handsets loaded with cash to make store purchases or travel throughout London. According to O2, nine out 10 participants enjoyed making cell phone payments.

Among the mobile payment activities in the O2 trial included:

Elsewhere, Visa announced the launch of new mobile payment programs in Brazil, South Korea and the United States. Visa has been working for some time with financial institutions, telecommunications providers and handset manufacturers in delivering mobile payments with efforts to improve the consumer payment experience.

According to the release, the latest programs include:

  • Brazil: Visa announced yesterday the availability of remote mobile payments in Brazil by Banco do Brasil. It is the first program of its kind in Latin America, allowing Banco do Brasil's Visa cardholders to pay with their mobile device and confirm the transaction via text message. The service is accessible through any Brazilian mobile carrier serving the more than 140 million subscribers in the country. Companhia Brasileira de Meios de Pagamento (VisaNet Brasil), the acquiring institution for all Visa debit and credit payment transactions in the country, will be running the deployment of this technology in Brazil.
  • Korea: In a world first and in partnership with T-Money provider KSCC (Korea Smart Card Company), card issuer Shinhan Bank and Korea Telecom Freetel (KTF), Visa has made it possible for commuters to use their Visa account to top up their T-Money balances automatically on the phone's SIM card when it falls below a certain level. By conducting the entire transaction automatically over the mobile network, commuters are freed from the inconvenience of waiting in line at transit kiosks or other agents to top up their transit account.
  • U.S.: Visa recently announced a partnership with Chase Bank for a pilot program to deliver personalized mobile offers to select consumers in Phoenix, AZ. With more than 50 participating merchants, the program has capacity for 5,000 participants who will receive offers, including discounts or special deals, directly to their mobile devices via text message. They will be able to redeem these offers at the merchant's location or online. The pilot will also cover special game day offers for baseball fans attending games at Chase Field, home of the Arizona Diamondbacks.
  • North America: Visa is working with multiple leading issuers, such as PNC Bank, SunTrust Bank, U.S. Bank, Wachovia, and Wells Fargo in the United States, and RBC, TD Bank Financial Group, and Vancity in Canada, to trial a transactions notification program that is able to send near real-time information to cardholders. Participating cardholders will receive e-mail or SMS text messages on their mobile devices whenever one or more transaction "triggers" occur, sometimes before they leave the store. These mobile notifications will be created simultaneously with the transaction, providing cardholders with an effective way to monitor and manage their accounts.

TD Waterhouse Launches Voice Biometrics System for Customer Transactions

By Derek Top | August 18, 2008


Canadian discount brokerage firm TD Waterhouse has begun rolling out a customer-facing voice biometric authentication process. The company is a subsidiary of TD Canada Trust, one of Canada's top five largest banks.

The new application, called Voice Print System, allows clients to create a unique voiceprint to speed up transactions and improve the customer experience, says the company. TD Waterhouse has set up several pages on its website explaining the new system's benefits and company privacy policy.

According to an article at ePaynews, Nuance Communications is the technology supplier for the Voice Print System. TD Waterhouse says it is the first discount brokerage in Canada to use voice biometric authentication and is targeting a rollout to the majority of its phone-based clients within a year.

Logica Committed to Access Management and Voice Biometrics

By Derek Top | August 7, 2008


In an up-close and personal interview, Tim Best with Logica talks with SC Magazine UK about enterprise security, identity management, and the high potential of ROI opportunities for companies that invest in access technologies.

Among the highlights, Best's encouraging words about voice biometrics:

Best is also big on biometrics, which he predicts have a great future, with relatively straightforward biometric technologies now being more widely adopted, especially in the banking sector where fear is undermining internet banking. "People are worried about internet fraud and identity theft, so they're using the telephone banking option more often, which means the bank's costs are going up," he says.

And again he sees opportunities against the backdrop of a credit crunch largely created by the banks themselves. "The banks have to fund this growth in telephone banking traffic and pay for someone to sit at the other end of the phone. It's quite expensive for them, so we're talking to a lot of the banks at the moment about using voice biometrics," he says.

Tim Best will be speaking at Voice Biometrics Conference London, November 19-20, on the panel, "Integrating Voice Biometrics with Existing Infrastructure."

Announcing Voice Biometrics Conference London

July 30, 2008


Opus Research is proud to announce Voice Biometrics Conference London, Nov. 19-20, 2008.

Voice Biometrics Conference London is a worldwide gathering of experts, technology providers, and industry peers focused on speaker verification and authentication solutions for contact centres, mobile transactions, forensic applications, and more. VBC London is the only conference to delve into challenging questions regarding development, deployment and user adoption of voice biometrics.

Highlighted topics include:

Confirmed speakers include:

Click here for more information. For group registrations (4 or more people), please contact Pete Headrick (phone: +1-415-904-7666, pheadrick@opusresearch.net)

Voice Commerce Group Launches Standards-Based Voice Signature Platform

By Derek Top | June 27, 2008


Voice Commerce Group, founded by Nick Ogden, announced the development and rollout of Voice Transact, a payment and transaction processing platform utilizing voice biometric signatures. The system is designed to fit into any financial process where a bank requires a signature.

"We believe that voice-signed transactions and payments will become as commonplace as Chip and Pin because they address key security concerns by delivering convenience, control, and responsibility to the consumer," said Ogden as part of the announcement.

Ogden says the Voice Transact system is the first to establish a framework of existing standards -- including Visa and MasterCard Level 1 PC1, ISO 19029, and EU certification 1999/93 -- and provides interoperability of voice biometric resources. Additionally, Voice Commerce Group will partner with Nuance Communications to supply the voice biometric engine and help in the global rollout.

Voice Transact is the back-end transaction processing system to the consumer-facing brand of VoicePay which was launched in May 2007. Ogden says the end-to-end system will first be offered as a hosted service to banks and financial institutions.

Technology Group Taps Voice Verification to Address Medicaid Fraud

By Derek Top | June 18, 2008


Medicaid fraud is an ever-growing concern for healthcare providers, taxpayers and government agencies alike. The U.S. spends more than $45 billion annually on Medicaid home healthcare but fraud, waste and profiteering has plagued the program in recent years. Increasingly, fraudulent cases are found in home healthcare and "consumer directed" plans where an individual is free to hire whomever they choose to provide home healthcare and bill directly to Medicaid.

Currently, there are over 20,000 home healthcare agencies today serving over 7.6 million people. And with the looming retirement of the Baby Boom generation, these numbers are likely to increase dramatically. Voice biometrics has a role to play in Medicaid fraud by eliminating the opportunity for patients to call in and bill for services never rendered and require verification of authorized healthcare providers.

Medical Management Technology Group, Inc. (MMTG), founded in early 2007, has focused on developing technology to improve the failing systems involved with home-based healthcare. In an interview with Opus Research, Joe Werner, Director of Information Systems with MMTG, discusses the need for fraud prevention and where voice biometrics fits in.

What is MMTG doing in terms of improving home-based healthcare?

The problem typically is that the payment process is slow and paper intensive for the medical providers, costly for both the provider and the insurer, and there is little or no fraud prevention or quality control in place. At MMTG, we apply a range of technology including optical recognition, biometric verification, voice/fax systems, and web-based software to increase efficiency in processing claims and detect and prevent fraud before payments are made. The key to MMTG's success is to keep the user's experience as simple as possible while these underlying technologies achieve their maximum results.

In the fall of 2007, MMTG formulated the concept for a home-based health care system that would verify service by using a phone-based time tracking system and voice biometric technology.

What is your planned application?

Payment processing for home-based health care includes paper intensive systems that result in slow payments to the providers, inaccurate data, and there is little or no fraud prevention in place.

To address these issues, we designed a phone-based time tracking system with integrated voice verification. Once each caretaker is enrolled, they are required to call into our system when they arrive at the patient's home and check in. During the brief call, they are asked to repeat random numbers so their voice can be verified. The caretaker calls our system again when they leave the patient's home and their voice is verified again. The voice verification ensures the paid caretaker is the person who is checking in and out. For each call, the caretaker is required to use the patient's phone so that our system can verify the caller ID and ensure the caretaker is onsite with the patient. The system records a time stamp for each call which can be used to track the duration of each visit. With this in place, billing for these services can be automated and fraud can be decreased if not completely eliminated.

How far along is the deployment?

Development began in December 2007 and in April 2008 the first version of the system was released. MMTG has been presenting the system to government and commercial organizations and is negotiating licensing agreements in upstate New York.

What significant challenges have you run into?

So far there have been three main challenges for us. The first was deciding which voice biometric technology provider to partner with. There are a number of great product offerings out there and we needed to select one. What helped us make the decision was to itemize our requirements:

Ultimately, we decided that Agnitio's Kivox product was the best fit for us. Kivox works by having the user repeat random series of numbers, and it is language and channel independent. They were also able to work out a licensing structure that fits with our plan for pricing the service.

The second challenge was to learn how to operate the voice biometric engine and integrate it with our software in time for an April 2008 release. Agnitio provided documentation about the engine and assisted our development team with the installation. After careful study of the documentation and experience with the technology, our team became very knowledgeable about handling audio data from the IVR and exchanging the audio and transaction data between our application server and the Kivox engine. Our team successfully integrated the features of the Kivox engine into our time tracking system and met the target for releasing the first version in April 2008.

The third challenge came during our initial testing of our system. The issue was we were getting unexpected results with the voice verification. With the same person calling multiple times in one day, the verification result was sometimes a failure, and sometimes not. The issue turned out to be that we had too few enrolled users in the system to get accurate results. The Kivox product is optimized for large scale operations. To address the issue, Agnitio loaded a sample population of a few hundred male and female users into the database. This solved the problem immediately.

Further advice or suggestions?

For someone that is new to voice biometric technology and interested in applying it to their business, I recommend the following:

1. Research the technology first. Develop an understanding of its capabilities.

2. Once you understand the technology, you are ready to map out what your business process requires from a voice verification product. Make a list of each necessary feature you've identified. For example, you will find in your research that some voice biometric products are "text dependent" which means the user must repeat a fixed phrase like "lucky star" each time they are verified. You will also discover as a pro that users find this to be user friendly and as a con that this approach can be possibly cheated with a tape recorder. With this knowledge, you can analyze your business process to determine whether fixed phrases (text-dependent) or random speech (text-independent) is the most appropriate option.

3. Finally, compare the various voice biometric products against your itemized requirements. This will give you a clear indication of who you should be talking to.

Voice Biometrics Gets Plug on Fox's "The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet"

By Derek Top | June 4, 2008


Voice biometrics as a solution to prevent identity theft was featured in a television interview today on the Fox program, "The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet." James Jackson, self-proclaimed "Father of Identity Theft" and speaker at last month's Voice Biometrics Conference New York, was invited for the segment, "Keep Your Identity," to discuss the various misdeeds that ultimately landed him in jail. When asked if there was anything that would've prevented him from committing these crimes, "Voice biometrics is the only thing that would've defeated me," said Jackson.

The nationally syndicated Fox program, which began airing in January 2007, is found in 68 U.S. markets, including 25 of the top 30. The show includes a typical talk show mix of celebrity interviews, audience interaction and informational segments.

Colorado Prison Department Chooses Diaphonics To Monitor Defendents

By Derek Top | June 4, 2008


A Colorado correctional division has chosen Nova Scotia-based Diaphonics in setting up a telephone verification and information system as an additional tool in helping reintegrate felony offenders back into the community. According to the announcement, the Larimer County (Colorado) Community Corrections will use Diaphonics' SpikeServer platform to provide defendants with pre-trial information, reporting schedules and electronic monitoring.

Voice biometrics is regularly used to track and monitor inmates on parole and those under house arrest.

Voice Biometrics Conference New York - A Resounding Success

Derek Top | May 20, 2008

VBC New York

More than 150 attendees convened in New York City last week to meet and discuss the maturing market for voice biometric technologies. Content and conversations ranged from understanding biometric basics and implementation challenges, a profile of the world's largest customer-facing deployment at Bell Canada, and hearing firsthand from the self-proclaimed "father of identity theft" on his various misdeeds and the need for improving phone-based security.

Opus Research is pleased to announce that the session presentations are now available for viewing or download (in .pdf format) from the Voice Biometrics Conference Web site.

Stay tuned for future announcements about Voice Biometrics Conference London in November 2008.

Australian Survey Shows Little Confidence in PINs and Passwords

By Derek Top | April 10, 2008


Fear of fraud and identity theft is eroding consumers' confidence in the way companies identify people over the phone, says a new survey by Australian-based callcentres.net.

The survey of 216 Australian men and women, conducted on behalf of VeCommerce, found dwindling levels of confidence in traditional contact center security methods such as asking for personal identification numbers (PINs) and passwords.

According to the survey, only 24% of people of those aged 18-30 felt that revealing their PIN number was a secure way to identify a caller, followed by a password (20%) and answering a personal details or history question (13%). Only 6% of those aged 31-45 thought a password was secure, followed by providing a PIN number (15%) and personal details (10%).

The survey also found almost half of respondents (47%) preferred organizations to use a "fairly complex process with fairly high security" for identification. To that end, voice biometrics was a preferred method of identification for both men (45%) and women (39%) and across all age groups.

Canadian Privacy Chief Hails Voice Biometrics

By Derek Top | March 13, 2008

Javelin

Lending a strong voice of support to the security benefits of voice biometric technology, the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, Canada touted an advancement in biometric encryption between PerSay and electronics giant Philips.

According to privacy commissioner Ann Cavoukian, the combined technologies, which apply Philips priv-ID biometric encryption to a PerSay voiceprint, exceeded performance expectations and "remained at a world class level with respect to accuracy, plus invaluable privacy and security benefits." The advancement has particular benefits in remote voice authentication where a biometrically encrypted template can be sent without degradation to a processing terminal for authentication.

Cavoukian is unabashed in her support of the development, "We are on the cusp of making a truly positive-sum solution a reality through the use of voice biometrics - an approach that enhances both the privacy and security of a biometric, in this case, your voice, which happens to be a unique and unobtrusive form of identification."

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