Earlier this week, we explored some big trends in the biometrics sector. Now, Technavio is putting the spotlight on some of the big players in biometric technology.

Vein recognition

First up is the Vein recognition biometrics market in the BFSI sector.

Vein recognition biometrics is gaining prominence in BFSI sector in areas like logical access control, physical access control, mobile banking, branch banking, kiosks, ATMs, and safe deposit lockers. The global Vein Recognition biometrics market in BFSI sector was valued at $153.52 million in 2014 and is expected to reach $524.07 million by 2019, growing at a CAGR of 27.83%.

Top companies in vein recognition

FUJITSU

Fujitsu offers PalmSecure bio Lock and PalmSecure ID Match vein recognition technology for retail, BFSI, government, automotive, healthcare, utility, entertainment sectors.

• PalmSecure bio lock: A contactless recognition technology that uses biometric patterns to identify human palm veins to ensure the safety of a customer's information. This technology is approved by the German Ministry of IT Security for ISO-based security certification.The financial sector is one of the major sectors using PalmSecure bio Lock and the technology has already been adopted by many banks for withdrawing money from ATMs.
• PalmSecure ID match: A two-factor authentication solution that help the end-user to increase the security of ID badges and cards. This solution works by comparing the palm of a person‘s hand with the biometric identity stored on the chip of a smart card. This contactless solution comprises of a PalmSecure sensor, a touchscreen, and ARM processor board, and a multi-card reader

Hitachi

The company offers Finger Vein Authentication technology for logical access and physical access applications. Its vein recognition product portfolio for the BFSI sector includes:

• USB finger vein biometric scanner, which is mainly implemented by PC users to safeguard their systems against unauthorized access and information loss
• Access control finger vein reader: A finger vein authentication system that prevents loss of corporate information and entry of unauthorized persons into home and office premises. This can also be used in combination with anti-theft monitoring systems to offer multiple layers of security

M2SYS Technology

M2SYS is a provider of biometric identity management solutions for government, public safety, workforce management, healthcare, and financial services sectors.

 The company offers vein recognition biometrics that captures, identify, and verify customer's identity through Finger and palm vein technology. Vein recognition technology works by passing infrared light through the finger and palm, which partially passes to haemoglobin in the veins allowing an image to be recorded.

NEC

NEC is a provider of biometrics solutions, products, and technologies to large customer base across different industry verticals such as government, BFSI, telecom, manufacturing, logistics, retail, hospitality, automotive, healthcare, education, and airports. The company offers Finger Vein authentication system for BFSI sector which includes:

• Contactless hybrid finger scanner: It is a dual scan authentication system that scans fingerprint and finger veins simultaneously without the need for physical contact

Safran (Morpho)

In December 2012, Morpho, a fingerprint identification firm, was acquired by Safran, a French security and identity solution provider.

The company offer finger vein authentication systems such as access control terminals and OEM modules for BFSI sector. It offers a number of finger vein authentication products for the BFSI sector. including:

• Morphoaccess VP series: It is a multimodal biometrics that combines finger vein and fingerprint technology and is used in BFSI sector for physical access control
• Morphosmart Finger VP OEM series: It is also a multimodal biometrics module that combines finger vein and fingerprint technology and is used in BFSI sector for wide range of applications such as access control, ATMs, and mobile devices for secure payments

Voice recognition

Voice biometrics technology digitizes an individual's voice to match it against a stored voiceprint template. Acoustic features of an individual's voice such as pitch, cadence, and tone are compared to distinguish between individual voices.

The global voice recognition biometrics market was valued at $677.06 million in 2014 and is likely to reach $1,841.30 million by 2019, growing at a CAGR of 22.15%.

Top companies in voice recognition

Agnitio

Agnitio provides solutions to the government and commercial sectors. It provides speaker identification and precise ID verification solutions through the following products:

• BATVOX: A forensic tool, specially designed for the identification of criminals by verifying the speaker. It is used by 35 courts worldwide to ensure precision and reliability in court hearings.
• ASIS: Provides a central database (BVP) to police forces for the identification of suspects and criminals during investigations. The voice sample of the suspect is matched against a list of possible candidates.
• BS3: A family of products used for voice surveillance to spot targets among millions of calls. They provide easy communication, scalability, and data exchange compatibility.
• SIFT: SIFT is a standalone toolkit that can be installed in a portable computer and supports law enforcement, forensic, and intelligence operations of various organizations.

Nuance Communications

Nuance Communications provides a number of voice recognition biometric solutions to assist industries such as healthcare, automotive, financial, government, law enforcement, education, construction, and retail in avoiding fraudulent activities. It offers natural language understanding capability, accuracy, domain knowledge, and implementation capabilities. The speech recognition capabilities provided by the company allows enterprises to carry out a number of functions, such as searching the web and working with documents. Offerings by the company include:

• FreeSpeech: With this solution, the caller's identity can be verified simultaneously while conversing. The voice of the caller is matched with those stored in the database within a few seconds. This reduces the call length, which makes it efficient and cost-effective. It stores voiceprints of various fraudsters to prevent fraud, as well.
• VocalPassword: The caller's identity is verified against database while interacting with a mobile app or interactive voice response (IVR) irrespective of call quality, accent, and language. It allows the user to use his or her voice as password and avoid carrying any device or remember any information for login purposes. It also proactively detects fraudsters. This solution can be used for remote employee validation, IT helpdesk identity verification, web transaction, and mobile app authentication.

VoicePass

VoicePass provides an application called the VoicePass Mobile Password Manager that provides safe and secure login to bank accounts, email, social media, personal, or business websites and enables end-users to back up their personal data and easily restore it. The application also does not require Internet access to store end-user data on their mobile device. The application can run on platforms such as Android, iOS, and Windows PC.

VoiceTrust

VoiceTrust serves a number of industries such as IT, healthcare, financial services, as well as call centers. Also, it provides both hosted and on-premise models to deliver significant benefits, user experience, and cost savings. Solutions include:

• Password Reset: Allows customers and employees to reset passwords remotely without the need for a help desk agent; helps enterprises work efficiently, as they save an average of $5-$15 per request for resetting the password
• Call Center Authentication: Provides a solution that enables customers to provide a simpler and quicker authentication process at call centers; helps organizations save time, as the authentication process takes approximately 20 seconds less than earlier authentication methods  
• Proof-of-Life: Helps protect pension funds against fraud and identity theft by verifying the identity of pensioners with the help of voice biometrics; the solution can remotely verify a recipient to shorten line-ups and increase operational efficiency
• Voice Login: Instead of using passwords, security questions, and PINs for authentication purposes, provides a voice login solution to its customers to avoid data breaches and increased number of compromised accounts; protects business applications and provides end-users with an additional layer of security

VoiceVault

VoiceVault provides a number of solutions:

• ViGo: A mobile identity verification app that provides security and convenience for end-users; Amazon Web Services, a collection of remote computing services offered by Amazon.com, provides services for ViGo; the app also provides round-the-clock monitoring and reporting
• Out-of-band Authentication: Helps confirm if the end-user has originated an online transaction that requires authentication while conforming to Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) guidelines; the authentication process can be an out-of-band call to a user-registered number or through an app
• Voice e-Signatures: Helps increase the telephone sales closure rate and reduce administrative costs, where voice is used as an e-signature
• VoiceVault Fusion: Can be deployed either on-premise or in the cloud, without any limit on the users or transactions