If you have called the bank to talk to a customer service rep about your account, they will ask you to authenticate yourself through a series of personal questions, and in some cases they will even ask for a password. These methods are relatively secure assuming that no one else knows those details.
However it seems that over in the Netherlands, the ING bank will be rolling out a new security feature for its customers. This feature will allow customers to use their own voice as a password, meaning that even if someone called with all the necessary information, their voice was be a dead giveaway that they are not the authorized user.
This technology is called voice biometrics and is actually developed by Nuance using their Nina technology. According to Nuance, they claim that voice biometrics is a more secure way of protecting accounts since it isn’t susceptible to brute force attacks, not to mention it is a lot more convenient since sometimes customers can forget their passwords.
ING’s use of Nuance’s technology will also make it the first bank in the Netherlands to utilize the technology, although Nuance’s voice biometrics have already been used in various parts of the world in a variety of different industries, like tax offices, telcos, and more.