Dutch bank rolls out Nuance-powered voice authentication in mobile app

While password management apps making signing in to banking institutions' websites and apps much easier, there's still the fact that they rely on text-based passwords, something many in the security industry say has got to go. Plus, in the event you make a mistake or there's an error when signing in, get ready to answer a litany of annoying security questions. Well, the ING Netherlands bank wants to skip all that, allowing customers to use their voice for authentication in its mobile apps.

The Dutch bank is rolling out the feature to its iOS and Android apps, letting users perform typical banking tasks like check their account and make transfers with just their voice as a password. The voice biometric technology comes from Nuance, the makers of the Dragon dictation software and who were originally behind the technology of Apple's Siri.

ING Netherlands' apps are powered by Nuance's Nina, a voice recognition technology like Siri, but made for customer service. It was first demonstrated a few years ago, with a video showing how people could simply say the phrase "my voice is my password" to authenticate banking tasks.

Those with the ING Netherlands app won't have to use the new voice features, as the bank says fingerprint scanners are also supported on devices that have them. But Nuance says that voice biometrics are more secure than fingerprints, since it isn't vulnerable to brute force attacks and, even better, the technology can learn and improve its security by recording and storing failed voice match attempts.

SOURCE Nuance