Is it Time to Retire PINs, Passwords and Maiden Names?
As accelerating numbers of system integrators and consumers climb on the speech recognition bandwagon, will speaker verification be right behind? Speech recognition of course determines what is being said, whereas verification determines who is speaking. Both consumers and system integrators have realized that PIN-based user authentication is simply too vulnerable to fraud. Not only is mother s maiden name also vulnerable to fraud, but it requires expensive, on-line human operator time to obtain and verify the information. Everyone wants something better – and speaker verification looks like the answer. Voiceprint verification has a lower equipment cost per user than other biometric applications since there are no client-side hardware/software requirements for each user terminal or workstation. In addition, voiceprint verification is much less intrusive than other biometrics. A word of caution is in order. A few companies are offering so-called speaker verification systems which are, i
