Intervoice introduces speech authentication software

The new turnkey solution, Omvia Authenticator, uses voice biometrics as a key component of caller authentication, incorporating multiple factors and analytics to achieve very high security levels and automation throughput. Intervoice recently announced an OEM agreement with Vocent Solutions Inc., the leader in voice security solutions, to provide significant automation capabilities and additional fraud prevention features within the new application.

Today's criminals are increasingly gravitating towards the telephone because it is impersonal, hard-to-trace, inexpensive, and they also know that companies are relying on information alone for identity verification. As a vulnerable channel, it is much easier to answer a few security questions over the telephone than to hack through a series of firewalls and encryption systems. Despite recent efforts by major institutions and government agencies in raising awareness of identity theft prevention, 75 percent of Americans believe that their identity is still no more secure than one year ago, according to survey results released by Intervoice yesterday.

To fight against fraud and identity theft, call centers are moving beyond simple security questions when verifying callers' identities. Omvia Authenticator from Intervoice now provides customers with leading-edge voice authentication technology to increase the security of their voice applications and build trusted relationships with their customers. The new application from Intervoice aims to make callers feel more confident, more secure, when using the telephone to access their account, or complete transactions. This security helps by boosting brand loyalty, improving customer retention and reducing churn. In addition, costs are reduced by improving self-service automation rates and reducing the amount of time it takes customer service agents to help customers complete their transactions.

Omvia Authenticator product features include:

• Advanced risk modeling to make highly accurate, real-time authentication decisions, taking into account voice biometric results, content knowledge, presence information, past behavior, and profile data to make the best possible authentication decision with highest level of accuracy and automation possible.
  
  
• Ability to be leveraged as an enterprise authentication resource across multiple applications and business needs as it resides on a separate authentication server.
  
  
• Usage of default enterprise database methodology for storing voiceprints and authentication profile information, allowing the voiceprint records to be managed in the customer's existing database infrastructure and maintained according to their database security and firewall rules.

The Omvia Authenticator uses considerable expertise in multi-factor authentication with a current focus on leveraging voice biometric technology for use in large-scale, consumer-facing deployments. The underlying technology can also be used by call center agents to conduct pre-enrollment authentication to make sure that the person whose voiceprint you are enrolling is identified correctly. A simple activity such as authentication can also help large call centers save millions of dollars by automating the specific task of off loading authentication activities from a live agent to an even smarter system. Beyond identification and authentication, Omvia Authenticator offers robust audit trail and proactive monitoring capabilities to meet regulatory compliance requirements. All of these process best practices are designed to increase customer trust in the integrity of their account relationships.

Exceeding automation and accuracy goals, Omvia Authenticator is able to use other factors such as caller behavior and information questions in authenticating callers even if a voiceprint does not match. Multiple factors are used to ensure tight security while boosting caller convenience including: voice biometric results, content knowledge, presence information, past behavior and profile data.

"Multi-factor voice authentication applications demonstrate to customers that security and privacy is important, and acts as a competitive differentiator for those companies who choose to protect the identity of their end user customers," said George Platt, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Enterprise Business Unit, at Intervoice. "In service provider industries such as financial services, health care and telecommunications, converting trust into loyalty ultimately drives greater customer profitability."