Telsolutions Ltd

Reducing and Combatting Identity Theft and Fraud

Over the past 10 years there has been a dramatic increase in the use of call centres and the internet as channels to market. This has been matched by massive growth in identity theft and fraud.

Identity theft is recognised as one of the fastest growing types of fraud. A report published by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) estimated that in 2003 around 10 million Americans discovered they were victims of identity theft. The total cost of this fraud was estimated at over $50billion.

In the UK, CIFAS, the UK’s Fraud Prevention Service reported that cases of False Identity and Impersonation fraud grew by 600% between 1999 and 2004. They estimated that the 120,000 cases reported in 2004 alone cost the British Economy 300m.

Additionally, APACS, the UK banks clearing service, reported 500m worth of UK issued plastic card fraud in 2004 - representing a fraudulent transaction taking place every eight seconds. Of this, 150m of fraud related to ‘card not present’ fraud – up 24% from 2003. APACS state that this crime most commonly involves the theft of genuine cards details to make a purchase through a remote channel such as the phone or internet.

Tackling these risks has never been more important to protect your business and retain customer confidence in phone and internet channels to market. Telsolutions VoiceVault’s reliable and accurate range of voice verified services helps fight these challenges.

Caller Authentication verifies the true identity of callers through their voice, rather than easily lost or stolen passwords or PINs.

Payment Verification adds ‘speak on the dotted line’ digital signatures to credit or debit card payments over the phone or web.

Web Authentication dramatically improves the security of your web services. Telsolutions VoiceVault removes the dependency on insecure PINS and Passwords helping build customer confidence in the security of your services.

Learn more about Telsolutions VoiceVault

Please contact Telsolutions VoiceVault to discuss how voice verification can help your business fight identity theft and fraud: sales@telsolutions.co.uk

Enrolment and Verification Processes

Enrolment and verification are the processes that a caller needs to go through in order to use a voice biometrics system. The enrolment process is a one-off operation that establishes the biometric identity of the caller in the system, and that precedes any subsequent verification of the caller.

Enrolment

A caller needs to enrol with a voice biometric system before they can verify themselves using their voice. A business process that identifies the caller as being eligible for voice verification and inviting them to enrol typically triggers the enrolment process. This involves establishing ground truth in relation to the callers' identity.

The act of enrolment varies depending on the mode of operation of the voice biometric system, but in a text dependent challenge response mode it will consist of the caller repeating back to the system a number of prompted, short numerical phrases, for example "0579". Between 6 and 12 such phrases are sufficient to achieve very high accuracy levels. The voice biometric system transforms these speech samples into a voiceprint that can subsequently be used to verify the caller. Ask about our Automated Enrolment plans.

Verification

Once a user has enrolled with a voice biometric system they can be verified against their enrolment voiceprint.

During the verification process, the caller will be asked to provide a form of claimed identity, which can be arbitrary but is typically an account or card number, before being asked to provide a speech sample. In a text dependent challenge response mode this speech sample will be one or more of the short numerical phrases used at enrolment time. Many variables will go into determining how many such phrases need to be spoken, including accuracy requirements, liveness testing, user experience, and so forth.

The voice biometric system will process the speech sample against the enrolment voiceprint in order to determine whether the caller definitely is; definitely is not; or could possibly be the claimed speaker.

Payment Verification

More businesses are becoming dependent on payments processed over the phone. This exposes businesses and customers to the growing risk of fraud.

Telsolutions VoiceVault is the only voice verification service that can offer EU certified advance digital signatures to help protect against these risks.

Payment Verification adds an advanced digital signature - ‘speak on the dotted line’ - to payment processes. This helps protects against fraudulent transactions, even where a card number, expiry date and CVV code has been stolen. Both business and client benefits from a convenient and secure payment process. It is particularly suited to an environment where credit or debit card details are held by the merchants system – for example a mobile phone top-up, or transferring money into a trading or gaming account.

How it works

At the point of payment your call centre or IVR system initiates a Payment Verification. The caller’s voice is authenticated and Telsolutions VoiceVault issues your system with a digital signature. The call centre operative or IVR system then continues with the call.

All Payment Verifications are stored permanently by Telsolutions VoiceVault in case of attempted repudiation by the client.

Benefits

Reduces risk of fraud, identity theft and customer repudiation
Customers benefit from an improved and more secure service
Easy to implement
Payments are digitally signed
Lower credit card charges possible - ‘Card Holder is present'

For more information on Payment Verification, please contact us at sales@telsolutions.co.uk