Companies need to keep their facilities secure. With voice biometric security, it is possible to completely secure a facility. Before going into why this is the ideal security system, it’s important to note what voice biometric is not. It is not the same as voice recognition. Voice recognition uses speech patterns and programming to discern what a user is saying. Its goal is not to autheticate a user. In addition, security is not provided by the user stating a password that needs to be recognized by the system. Security via voice biometrics is provided by authenticating that the voice belongs to a specific person.
When most people think of voice biometric security, they think of the scene from the movie Sneakers where false access was granted by replaying a voice recorder of the authorised person’s voice. Fortunately, that doesn’t happen in real life. When listening on the telephone, does the voice sound different than it does in real life? It does because machines only attempt to replicate enough characteristics of a voice to be recognizable. It makes no attempt to reproduce a person’s voice perfectly. The truth is that it is just about impossible to copy a person’s voice closely enough to trick the security system into accepting a false recording. Unlike a password or access card, a voice cannot be forgotten, misplaced, or stolen.
Another objection to many biometric security systems is that they are expensive. For example, fingerprint and retinal scanners are very expensive to purchase. However, voice biometric security requires almost no hardware and is very cheap to install. Unlike fingerprint or retina scans, voice biometric does not require physical presence at a facility for access. A great example is to use it at call centers since they require remote verification of customers. While identity theft is rampant with stolen credit card numbers, driver’s licence numbers, and passwords, it’s not possible to steal a voice.
Finally, voice biometric security is not a new technology. One form or another has been used since 1967. Many security researchers in the distant past knew about voice biometric’s potential while they waited for technology to catch up. It is only recently in the past few years with advancing technology that these voice biometric systems became viable as a security system that is both very cheap and very secure.
