One of Switzerland’s biggest telecoms is embracing passive biometric authentication for its customers. Swisscom has announced that starting early this month, customers calling in to the company will be identified by their voices.
While voice recognition is increasingly being used as a means of passive identification that can help to improve the customer experience, in announcing its deployment Swisscom emphasized the security it would enable, suggesting that “it is becoming easier and easier for potential defrauders to gain access to personal data on the internet and to present themselves as a different person”. By introducing the voice recognition system – called Voiceprint – Swisscom is offering its customers “the leading edge security standard”, said the company’s Head of Customer Care in a statement.
Still, the company is taking care to ensure the system is convenient for its clients. Swisscom says its passive authentication will begin “with the second call”, eliminating the need for security questions as a means of authentication; it also emphasized that the content of conversations won’t be recorded. And, of course, any customer can opt out of the system – but they’ll have to go back to answering time-consuming security questions when they call in for account access.
–
August, 2016 – by Alex Perala
Follow Us