Neurotechnology, a provider of technology which can identify a person by voice, face, fingerprint, palm print and iris, has introduced VeriSpeak, the company's new voice identification technology, especially useful in online banking and payment where real-time accuracy is crucial, according to the company’s press release at its website.

Biometric identification is “the automatic identification of living individuals by using their physiological and behavioral characteristics,” according to thefreedictionary.com.

VeriSpeak allows a person to be identified using voiceprint identification and phrase recognition technologies by recognizing his or her voice and using a password or passphrase, according to the press release. What makes VeriSpeak particularly useful is that it can be used with a regular microphone, making it a simple, cost-effective mode of secure identification for standalone or web-based systems such as online banking and payment transactions, the press release reports.

Voice identification technology was actually pioneered in the 1960s, according to globalsecurity.org, but it has since been updated and upgraded for use today.

Voice identification is used in many ways, sometimes in criminal cases, including “murder, rape, extortion, drug smuggling, money-laundering, tax evasion, burglary, bomb threats, terrorist activities and organized crime activities,” according to expertpages.com, an online directory for expert witnesses, as it describes itself.

How voice identification works is simple. A person's “voiceprint” can be entered into the system along with that person's unique speech pattern in pronunciation of a specific word or phrase (passphrase), according to the press release. When the person wants entry to a physical area or protected information, he or she speaks the password into the microphone and the system checks for both voice and phrase authenticity prior to allowing access.

Users can have one or more passphrases to answer different security questions. According to Neurotechnology, in the authentication mode, the system allows users to answer any one of the security questions from the set. This use of the passphrase also ensures that a live person (not a voice recording) is what’s being heard, which provides an extra measure of security and fraud prevention, the press release says.

VeriSpeak voice identification technology can be used along with the company’s face, fingerprint, palm print and iris identification, according to the press release.  

VeriSpeak is now available in the VeriSpeak Software Development Kit (SDK) and as a new voice identification component in the latest MegaMatcher 4.1 multi-biometric SDK, also announced recently.

Deborah DiSesa Hirsch is an award-winning health and technology writer who has worked for newspapers, magazines and IBM (News - Alert) in her 20-year career. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.