Press Release FSTC And Touchpoint Consulting Announce Technology Partners for Voice Authentication Study Four voice authentication technology companies will participate in industry's first independent consumer acceptance and preference research study. BOSTON, and NEW YORK, March 26 /PRNewswire/ -- Touchpoint Consulting and FSTC are pleased to announce that four leading voice authentication technology companies will participate in their Voice Authentication Study, which was launched earlier this year with nine sponsor financial institutions and services companies. The study will investigate consumer views on voice authentication applications, which utilize unique characteristics of a caller's voice to verify their identity. FSTC and TouchPoint Consulting have partnered to design and develop the study for the sponsor group. The study will combine qualitative and quantitative research, as well as hands-on user testing of prototype applications. Authentify, TargusInfo, TradeHarbor, and Vocent will each contribute a prototype application to the study, allowing the study's sponsors to see first-hand how users respond to enrolling their voice and verifying their identity. These contributions will play a key role in helping the sponsors understand what users prefer, and how best to shape future applications. "According to the Federal Trade Commission, identity theft is the fastest growing crime in the country," said John Zurawski, vice president of sales and marketing at Authentify. "Voice technology can offer very effective protection. We're pleased the FSTC and Touchpoint took the initiative to bring consumers, banks and technologists together to learn how best to offer that protection." "With the public's increased awareness of identity theft and financial fraud, FSTC has taken the necessary steps to uncover what's most important: how likely are consumers to embrace new technologies that dramatically reduce fraud from their trusted financial institutions," said Joe Saunders, vice president of business development at TargusInfo. "We are pleased to provide our Real-Time Intelligence and Secure Transactions solutions - which include speaker verification - to the FSTC to help conduct these important consumer trials." "Financial institutions are finding that voice authentication can simplify customer service interactions, decrease operator expenses, and simultaneously reduce fraud from identity theft and account takeovers," said Paul Heirendt, President and CEO of TradeHarbor. "In addition, telephone and online merchants are looking to their financial service providers to help them identify and eliminate fraudulent transactions through voice authentication." "Secure, automated methods of authenticating users in telephone transactions will yield strong economic as well as security benefits for financial institutions," said Chuck Buffum, President and CEO of Vocent. "Voice authentication will also provide consumers with greatly increased protection against identity theft." The voice authentication study will be completed and presented to sponsors in early Q2 2003. The project remains open to additional financial institution sponsors. Please contact David Brown for more information at +1 (781) 935- 6154. About TouchPoint TouchPoint Consulting is a psychology-based research and professional services firm with expertise in the financial services industry. TouchPoint has extensive experience with the design and implementation of touchtone and speech-driven telephone systems, as well as on-line banking & investment portals. As an innovator in modeling user behavior, TouchPoint helps financial institutions uncover how customers think and talk about their interactions, and address the important behavioral differences when customers interact across channels. For more information, visit http://www.touchpointconsulting.com. About FSTC FSTC is a financial industry research organization comprised of banks, financial service firms, industry partners, national laboratories, universities and government agencies. Its goal is to bring forward interoperable, open-standard technologies for the financial services industry that makes possible new products and services. FSTC projects push the envelope of financial services technology, focusing on areas where industry collaboration is possible, and needed, to enable new products, reduce costs and risk, or expand market reach. FSTC provides a unique forum for financial institutions and vendors to work together on taking ideas from concept to pilot to the marketplace. For more information, visit http://www.fstc.org/. About Authentify Authentify pioneered the synchronization of Internet sessions with voice telephony for automating multi-factor authentication tasks. The interactive Authentify process is the only way to make undeniable out-of-band contact with the specific online user behind a computer that requires no special hardware or software. The engaging interaction between the Internet, the user and their telephone via the Public Switched Telephone Network can be used to both add security and automate routine tasks that otherwise consume the time of service personnel. The process is used in many applications including identity confirmation, out-of-band PIN delivery, transaction authorization, and digital certificate registration. Authentify was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Customers include AssureBuy, Boeing Employee Credit Union, Hewlett Packard, the U.S. Social Security Administration, VeriSign and others. About TargusInfo Since its founding in 1993, TARGUSinfo(TM) has pioneered the development of Real Time Intelligence to help companies more productively process customer and prospect transactions. Through patented processes and data linkages, TARGUSinfo(TM) incorporates its industry-leading and standards-based speech recognition grammars and speaker verification solutions to instantly identify, recognize, authenticate, locate, verify, and route millions of customers and prospects. In addition, TARGUSinfo processes over 600 million transactions per month by linking virtually every household and business telephone number in the U.S. with information including name, postal address, predictive household buying behavior scores, risk management and store locator information. A privately held company, TARGUSinfo is headquartered in Vienna, Virginia. About TradeHarbor TradeHarbor's Voice Signature Service(SM) uses a person's voice as their unique, portable identifier, enabling real-time Authentication, Authorization, and Audit of telephone or Internet transactions anywhere in the world. The Voice Signature Service(SM) offering is specifically designed for consumer- facing applications and provides a common authentication process across disparate call centers, interactive voice response systems, and Internet platforms. As a managed service, the Voice Signature Service(SM) provides unparalleled security and Return on Investment. A patent-pending confidence scoring process enables dynamic decision thresholds based upon various transaction factors such as risk category or transaction value. For more information visit www.tradeharbor.com or call 314-878-1200. About Vocent Vocent Solutions Inc. (www.vocent.com) is the leading developer of voiceprint authentication solutions. Headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., the privately held company uses industry standards to deliver voice applications that securely automate a wide range of business transactions. Vocent's platform-independent packaged solutions combine voice technology with unique application-level functionality to ensure significant cost savings and increase user convenience while enforcing the highest levels of security. Vocent provides packaged applications that are typically installed in less than 60 days and pay for themselves within 6 months. For more information about Vocent, visit www.vocent.com or call 650-316-3000. Source: FSTC
Wednesday March 26, 2:17 pm ET