When it comes to telephone banking, Barclays is looking to lead the way by enabling voice recognition technology for all of its customers.
This means that when it comes to the usual security process for this particular service, instead of typing in a password, customers will instead be verified by their voice.
While the bank has offered this technology for a few years now – to its Wealth customers, for example – this is the first time it has made it widely available.
Discussing the new measure, Barclays said that voice recognition technology will offer even greater security.
This, it said, was down to the fact that everyone’s voice is “as unique as their fingerprint, made made up of over 100 characteristics based on the physical configuration of the speaker's mouth and throat”.
However, when it comes to passwords, which have the potential to be complex and hard to decipher, many people fail to adhere to best practice, opting for easy to remember passwords.
This means that these passwords, used to ‘protect’ various accounts and devices, are easy to crack, offering very little in the way of security.
Alternatives like passphrases, and indeed voice recognition technology, are considered to be much stronger.
“We have been testing it for a while to make sure it will work with the vast majority of people and that we won’t have a high rejection rate,” Barclays’ personal banking chief Steven Cooper was quoted by the Telegraph as saying.
In related news, Barclays reported last month that professionals working in the UK are less likely to keep their devices secure, compared to those in China, South Africa and Brazil.
The Barclays Digital Development Index said that the UK needs to invest more in digital technologies and skills, stating that is falling behind “digital tiger” economies like Estonia, South Korea and Sweden.
