Hosted IVR

February 01, 2013

Security Turns to Face and Voice Biometrics

By Robbie Pleasant
TMCnet Contributor

It never hurts to be too secure. It’s not paranoia to protect important data from those who would want to steal it, which is why information security has been seeing a growth in face and voice biometrics. They can both establish one’s identity through image and voice samples, providing a reliable but non-intrusive security method.

Biometric IDs are already popular in Europe, both on a government and consumer level. The United States is currently the largest regional market for face and voice biometrics, although the market is growing incredibly fast in the Asia-Pacific region.

Face biometrics itself is the fastest growing product segment, due in part to how it can establish an identity over distances from a camera, allowing a person to access what they need even if they’re not at a specific physical location. The same can be said for voice recognition, which has proven itself to enterprise IT help desk and customer care quite nicely.

There are a few things that make biometrics desirable as a security feature. For starters, there’s no risk of losing a key or forgetting a password; unless your fingerprints get burned off in an accident or you lose your voice. In fact, biometrics will be able to recognize you and all you have to remember is to be there. That also makes it more secure, since the only way one would be able to hack a biometric password is by pulling a “Mission Impossible” style disguise.

Unlike fingerprint or handprint identification though, facial and voice biometrics don’t require one to be physically present and can be used over distances, as long as there’s a camera or microphone present. As such, the global market for face and voice biometrics has been seeing a nice upswing and is likely to be a more common form of security in the near future.

Maybe now passwords will stop telling me to include an upper-case letter, a number, my favorite element on the periodic table, and at least one letter with an umlaut in order to be secure. Having a simple voice password is far easier and more safe.

Edited by Jamie Epstein