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For authentication, consumers want simple and secure

November 8, 2013 by Kevin Christensen — Vice President, Audit, SHAZAM

Our lives are increasingly digital, which makes accessing our personal information and accounts a daily activity. Resultantly, authentication has taken on a starring role in the area of security and risk.

This high-profile position has attracted innovators intent on coming up with "the next big thing" in authentication.

Just as we are seeing in the mobile payments realm, authentication innovators seem to be forgetting an important fact: Consumers demand simplicity. Although there are several cool new methods for verifying that users are who they say they are, many of them require too many steps to be palatable to the average Joe and Jane.

Too many innovators are developing systems that set the bar just a bit too high for practical use (think download, install, visit website, scan image, go through setup process, open app, log in, etc.)

For me, biometrics is the future of authentication, with voice authentication showing the most promise.

Today, voice authentication is nothing more than a numerical representation of a user's voice. It's easy, doesn't require the user to remember anything, and supposedly cannot be duplicated.

The company behind Siri, Apple's voice-activated virtual assistant, says its next generation voice biometric technology is 50 percent more accurate than its predecessor, reaching 99.6 percent accuracy, and is better able to detect fraud.

Although biometrics such as fingerprints and eye scans are secure, there again we are missing the "simple," as today they are too difficult to deploy. Voice, on the other hand, can easily be rolled out in many different areas.

Evolution in authentication methods will very soon hit the financial services industry. As consumers demand innovative (yet simple and secure) methods for accessing their information, their FIs will be among the first to feel the pressure to meet that demand.

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