Article about Voiceprints in Life Magazine - September 28, 1962

On September 28, 1962, Life Magazine published the following fascinating article about voiceprints:

"Device picks Jack from all the pack"

"The Kennedy mimics may sound just like the President to people, but they do not fool a highly sensitive machine which makes voice-prints that may be as infallible in identifying individuals as fingerprints are. The device was developed by Bell Telephone for a very serious purpose: to help law-enforcement agencies identify persons who have been heard but not seen. The tape of a voice, perhaps recorded on the phone or by wiretapping, is fed to a stylus which transcribes electronic impulses into squiggly graphs. The squiggles trace volume, resonance and pitch which are never the same for any two people. As the voice-prints at left and below show, the machine can unmask even the cleverest of imitators."

An accompanying caption mentions that the voiceprint technique was created by Dr. Lawrence Kersta of Bell Laboratories. Check out this video.

Early History of Voice Biometrics

Most people think of voice biometrics as a relatively new technology. However, according to a 2004 article by Lisa Myers (SANS Institute), the history of voice biometrics actually began in 1867. At that time, Alexander Graham Bell’s father began work on developing an early voiceprint. Jumping ahead to World War 2, the same article mentions the pioneering work by Bell Telephone Labs on spectrograms. The concept was to identify a specific enemy’s voice and track their movements by the location of their radio transmissions. Apparently, the technology did not work very well.

Fast forward two decades. According to the National Science and Technology Council, in 1960, a Swedish professor, Gunnar Fant, published a ground-breaking model describing the physiological components of acoustic speech production. Fant’s model was expanded in 1970, by Dr. Joseph Perkell, to include the tongue and jaw. In 1976, Texas Instruments developed a prototype voice biometrics system that was tested by the United States Air Force and Mitre Corporation. Voice biometrics was on its way!

Why are Help Desk Agents Still Resetting Passwords?

I’ve seen estimates that 40%+ of help desk transactions are password reset related. Voice biometrics can enable users to reset their own passwords without help desk intervention. Automated self-service password reset applications provide significant benefits to the IT organization, including:

1) Reduces costs – no need for live agent
2) Improves service – available 24/7, never a wait for a live agent and faster service
3) Increases security – voice biometrics is more secure than challenge questions to verify a user’s identity questions

Automated password resets is a relatively simple process. The user calls the help desk IVR, selects the password reset option, enters one factor of authentication (e.g., account number) and validates their identity by providing a voiceprint sample. Once the user's identity is verified, the system generates a new password and either emails or speaks it over the phone.