Nuance announces updates to biometric fraud detection offering

Conversational AI company Nuance Communications has announced updates to Nuance Gatekeeper, a biometric solution for authenticating customers and enabling fraud detection.

Available as a scalable cloud service, the solution allows enterprises to confirm the identity of customers and detect potential fraudsters over voice and text channels using a set of characteristics and traits about an individual.

With data breaches on the rise and usernames and passwords compromised, it is simple for fraudsters to get access to most any individual's personal information, rendering traditional knowledge-based security methods obsolete.

A recent Nuance survey found 1 in 4 people have fallen victim to fraud in the last twelve months, each person losing an average of $2,000 due to inefficient passwords.

"Biometrics provide the power to secure individuals based on who they are rather than what they know," says Opus Research lead analyst Dan Miller.

"If hacked, data in the form of biometric templates is far less valuable than stored passwords because they are almost impossible to replicate.

"Companies find cloud-native security models to be more attractive because they are accessible, scalable and offer access to real-time updates to the newest fraud-fighting algorithms," Miller says.

Nuance was named a market leader by Opus Research for its biometric technology and Nuance Gatekeeper now allows organisations of all sizes to use biometric technology to validate customers' identities across any channel they engage.

Updates include:

• A cloud-native platform that speeds deployments across cloud and on-premise delivery models
   
• The Nuance Lightning Engine, the AI-powered voice biometrics engine, that needs half a second of audio to authenticate and start personalising a customer engagement
   
• Nuance ConversationPrint that uses AI to develop a personalised model of how a user types or speaks. The system can detect possible fraud when sentence structure, grammar and vocabulary being used don't match the real customer's model
   
• Behavioural biometrics that builds models based on an individual's unique behaviour patterns including how they use a keyboard, move a mouse or swipe apps on a touchscreen. If the behaviour model does not match a registered individual, such as when a fraudster hijacks a chat session, Gatekeeper can flag suspicious activity and escalate to a fraud specialist
   
• Flexible integration to cloud and legacy contact centre infrastructures

"Biometrics is the future of identification and we see it as the golden ticket for organisations that want to enhance security for customers without negatively impacting the engagement experience," says Nuance enterprise division security business GM Brett Beranek.

"With Gatekeeper, we offer more advanced layers of protection to organisations by bringing AI to the forefront and combining traditional biometrics methods with some that are newer to market.

Nuance Gatekeeper is now generally available.