Ra’Anana, Israel-based NICE Systems is the latest member of the FIDO (Fast IDentity Online) Alliance, the growing global organization working on global specifications and standards for simplified user authentication. For those in the contact center solutions community who are unaware of FIDO, a visit to the organization’s website is something to seriously consider.
Indeed, FIDO is aimed at nothing short than on a global bases transforming how trusted interactions between end users and online capabilities will be done in the future. The goal is “Developing technical specifications that define an open, scalable, interoperable set of mechanisms that reduce the reliance on passwords to authenticate users.” Ultimately it is enable a strong authentication capability that eliminates the need for passwords, which as we all know can and are easily compromised along with being easily forgotten and hard to manage.
NICE is lending its expertise to FIDO in the area of simple but powerful voice-based authentication. This will help expand the efforts of the Alliance beyond the online channel to other areas where such authentication methods are in demand, such as the contact center.
Voice authentication is a proven means for authentication, especially over the years where speaker dependent recognition is used to authenticate that somebody is who they claim to be. NICE's Real-Time Authentication solution has proven attractive because it enables organizations to authenticate customers in a matter of seconds, during the natural course of a conversation. The underlying technology, based on voice biometrics, uses a customer's unique voice print to automatically confirm their identity. NICE's Seamless™ Passive Enrollment process uses previous call recordings to automatically enroll customers in the program, making this another fundamental element in reducing customer effort.
Miki Migdal, President, NICE Enterprise Product Group in comments about joining the FIDO Alliance stated that: "NICE is committed to the core values of the FIDO Alliance to improve the customer experience throughout the authentication process. This includes moving away from passwords and towards customer-centric methods that reduce customers' effort while ensuring their protection. Regardless of how consumers choose to interact with organizations along the customer journey - whether by phone, company website, online chat, or face-to-face at the branch - organizations must get closer to their customers so that they can remove service barriers and provide an exceptional experience."
Michael Barrett, FIDO Alliance President added: "We are excited to welcome our newest associate member, NICE. The FIDO vision of universal strong authentication promises better security, enhanced privacy, more commerce and expansion of services throughout digital industries. NICE's addition to our Alliance supports our industry goal to make user authentication easier and safer for all parties."
As noted at the top, the issue of customer authentication for contact centers is non-trivial. Pardon the pun but it is nice that NICE has joined FIDO to help the Alliance leverage NICE’s expertise in voice authentication.