PerSay Wins 2010 Speech Industry Award

Congratulations to Persay for winning the 2010 Speech Industry Award for Speech Security. Other recipients in the category included: Leaders: Agnitio and Raytheon/BBN; Vendor Contender: Loquendo.

The Speech Industry Awards are handed out each year by Speech Technology magazine. According to the magazine's website, "recipients were determined through an extensive process and proprietary rating formula that involves collecting industry analyst and consultant reviews, financial and corporate information, product and functionality assessments, and scores based on their importance to current and potential customers."

PerSay Ltd., with offices in Tel-Aviv, Israel and New York, is a provider of voice biometrics products.

Voice Biometrics Case Study - National Australia Bank

In 2009, Telstra , an Australian telecommunications company, deployed a voice biometrics identity verification system at the National Australia Bank. The system, dubbed “Speech Security,” uses Salmat VeCommerce‘s VeSecure® Biometric solution (which is powered by Nuance Verifier™). According to NAB’s Website, Speech Security was introduced to “improve the customer experience on NAB’s telephone banking and enhance security and privacy by removing the need for customers to remember PINs and passwords.”

Enrollment Process:
• The enrollment process is voluntary and takes approximately three minutes
• Customer is prompted to repeat a series of words
• This process creates the client’s “base” voiceprint and stores it in the database for future use

Verification Process:
• Customer calls NAB and is prompted to say their account number and date of birth
• This process creates the customer’s “sample” voiceprint which is then compared to their “base” voiceprint in the database
• If the voiceprints match, the customer’s identity is verified

Speech Security was initially rolled-out to 3.3 million NAB customers.