VoiceVerified®: Offering New Hope in Identity Protection

Hosted Speech Solutions - For Enterprise and Service Provider Markets
November / December 2007

The man from New Hope has the answer. The question is: What can be done about an identity theft problem that is stealing billions of dollars from american businesses and consumers?

In an August 2007 ComputerWorld article entitled “Your Data’s Less Safe Today Than Two Years Ago,” Gartner Group analyst Avivah Litan said that identity theft attacks have spiked all the way to a “50% increase since 2003.” She further claims that 15-million Americans were victimized in just a 12-month period. The “average loss per incident,” Litan said, “was $3,257.” That figure is “more than twice” what it had been.

That’s an almost $50 billion loss per year. But there are losses that are even worse. As former US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales noted when speaking as part of the President of the United State’s Identity Theft Task Force, “Identity theft is a crime that goes far beyond the loss of money or property,” he said. “It is a personal invasion…that can rob men and women of their good names.”

For many consumers, that’s an unforgivable crime. An overwhelming 77% of 1,200 respondents to a Javelin Research & Strategy survey said they would take their business away from even a favored store if it were “hit with a data breach.”

These statistics and observations could be a rational cause for panic. But the man from New Hope, Jeffrey D. Randol, is calm and relaxed.

Randol is CEO of New Hope, PA-based VoiceVerified®, a company that offers a hosted, voice-biometric based solution that’s gaining a lot of attention. “There are two basic problems with the way businesses are currently defend- ing their data,” he said. “First, in order to secure accounts they collect and hold personal customer information such as maiden names and Social Security numbers. This in itself creates a terrible identity security issue since their security measures obviously don’t work.”

The VoiceVerified® solution to these problems, Randol says, is absolute and easy. “We’ve developed a hosted, voice-biometric based solution that identifies your customers with incredible accuracy just by having them repeat a few random digits.”

According to Randol, VoiceVerified® has developed what it calls a Point Service Provider®(PSP) solution. “It can be inserted at any point in your business processes where you need to authenticate identity,” he said. “It’s fast and friendly to the customer, it creates a real brand difference for the business, and yet it’s a lot more secure than other solutions currently available.”

The advantages of the PSPare obvious, Randol said. “Because our solution is hosted there is no voice-related data for our clients to keep track of, protect or maintain. And since our solution is based on the advanced technology of voice biometrics, even we do not need to hold any personal customer information. We merely ask the customer to repeat a few random digits to prove their identity. That’s it.”

“It’s tremendously liberating for everybody in the process,” he said. “Businesses can spend their time selling and servicing. Consumers can spend their time buying. Nobody is constrained by undue effort or fear.”

In addition to those unique benefits, the VoiceVerified® model also offers the advantages of any hosted solution. It can be utilized without upfront capital; it allows smaller companies to enjoy the same advantages as big players; it seamlessly scales to accommodate growth; it can be implemented quickly; and it offers constant upgrades, fine-tuning, and new features.

The VoiceVerified® service is architected for high availability, reliability, security, accuracy and privacy protection. Customers who utilize the service platform have the benefit of an outsourced, multipoint datacenter and telephony architecture. The datacenter points are enabled with active load balancing and full failover capabilities. VoiceVerified® customers are always protected and guaranteed to have service. It’s also worth noting that VoiceVerified® offers fully managed and hosted telephony centers for customers who do not have their own.

There are just three ways to authenticate customer identity: “Something They Have” (a picture ID or token); “Something Only You and They Know” (a password, PIN, or personal information), or something “They Are” (a bio- metric such as a fingerprint or voiceprint).

“Of these options, a voiceprint offers considerable advantages, especially when identifying an individual who is remote, or not present,” Randol said. “First, a voiceprint cannot be lost, stolen or forgotten like a ‘Something They Have’ item. And it protects privacy better than a ‘Something They Know’ secret since a voiceprint doesn’t require the divulgence of any personal or private information whatsoever.”

The VoiceVerified® biometric engine is architected to provide two basic functions: 1) Enrollment, and 2) Authentication.

Individuals can enroll with VoiceVerified® in as little as a minute. They are automatically prompted to repeat a random set of numbers, which creates a unique voiceprint that’s stored as a mathematical representation.

In the authentication process, before individuals make transactions or are granted secure access, they are merely prompted to repeat a few random numbers. Then they are accurately authenticated. Or prevented from committing a crime. Either way, the process only takes a few seconds. The customer is not burdened with having to remember PINs or passwords, so they have nothing to manage, lose, or have stolen. They are not required to inappropriately share any of their personal information.

One reason, organizations have said, that they have difficulty protecting identity data is their inability to find a solution that is simple enough for rapid deployment and yet can scale precisely to their needs.

As Peter J. Soufleris, VoiceVerified® chief technology officer, explains, the PSP was architected to allow the service to meet both needs. “We’ve designed our PSP platform to allow the easiest, fastest and least expensive way to achieve accurate and secure identity authentication,” he said. “But we also designed it not to be a burden to the technology staffs of the companies that purchase it. The technical and the business requirements for connecting to VoiceVerified® are minimal and standards-based.”

In fact, the PSP platform is easily integrated with legacy IVR, Web site, password reset or other customer enterprise applications. For organizations with call center VoiceXML capabilities, integration is just as easy.

“Your VoiceXMLplatform answers a call, and when enrollment or authentication functions are needed, that system simply makes a sub-dialog call to our datacenter,” said Soufleris. “Our PSP platformhandles the request and then returns the call to the client application for continued processing.”

Soufleris went on to stress that the better solution his group has created isn’t a more expensive solution. “Very much on the contrary,” he adds. “An organization that adopts our service will enjoy significant IT savings. I can give you a list of areas:

• Internal resources. VoiceVerified® requires a simple API exchange for connection and scales rapidly without taxing your people or infrastructure.
• Time. VoiceVerified®can be deployed quickly, and scales quickly to meet critical business deadlines.
• Hassle. The solution is customer architected and can be inserted non-intrusively anywhere in the business processes where on-demand identity authentication is needed.
• Capital. Implementing VoiceVerified® requires virtually no additional investment in hardware, software or licensing fees.
• Development costs. VoiceVerified® continues to incorporate the latest advances in biometrics, telephony, connectivity and feature sets into its service platform.

“As you can see, the savings are substantial,” Soufleris said.

Both Randol and Soufleris are enthusiastic about the number of features they’ve managed to include in the service. “We’re very proud that an authentication system can do this much,” Randol said. “When you look at our list of features you can’t help but feel that we are exceeding the market’s expectations.”

• On-demand service allows for rapid deployment tailored to your business rules wherever and whenever identity authentication is needed.
• The proprietary Dynamic Voice Challenge® process making spoofing virtually impossible while authenticating individuals in seconds by repeating a few random digits.
• Support for multi-modal and multi-channel enrollment via IVR, telephony system, online, via private network or in-person – customers decide the method that works best for them.
• Flexible call connection options including call-in, call-out, embedded audio and other methods.
• Tunable security levels by transaction amount or type.
• Support for industry standard protocols (such as VoiceXML) and interfaces allowing organizations to leverage their existing IT and telephony infrastructure.

The man from New Hope is changing a situation that was once thought hopeless. “Now businesses can enjoy a hosted system that really opens the doors to better remote business,” Randol said. “Our service is maintained on a robust platform that takes care of all the headaches of building and managing a solution. It frees companies to focus on solving critical business problems. And with voice as your unforgettable password™, customers enjoy safe, secure remote access and purchasing.

“We’re proud that we’re making business and life more secure,” he said. “What could be more important for a business to provide today than that?”

By Michael Antonucci - Published by Information Today, Inc. - Speech Technology Magazine

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