A programmable policy manager for conversational biometrics

Abstract

Conversational Biometrics combines acoustic speaker verification with conversational knowledge verification to make a more accurate identity decision. To manage the added level of complexity that the multi-modal user recognition approach introduces, this paper proposes the use of verification policies, in the form of Finite State Machines, which can be used to program a policy manager. Once a verification policy is written, the policy manager interprets the policy on the fly, and at every turn in the session decides dynamically whether to accept the user, reject the user, or continue to interact and collect more data. The policy manager allows for any number of verification engines to be plugged-in, thereby adding to the flexibility of the framework. As a result, system developers have significant freedom to design user verification solutions, and a wide variety of applicationspecific, transaction-specific and user-specific constraints can be addressed using a generic system. The paper also describes a prototype implementation of a Conversational Biometrics solution with the proposed programmable policy manager.