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28/10/02

Blackbook profiles SecuriVox

SecuriVox was one of ten 'star turns' profiled in blackbook 2002, the yearbook published by Young Company Finance in partnership with Connect Scotland, LINC and The Entrepreneurial Exchange. The publication chose these ten companies - five as 'current stars' and five (including SecuriVox) as 'stars of the future' - to illustrate the way in which Scotland's strong technology base is being successfully commercialised. Here's what they said:

"SecuriVox is a company that knows the importance of saying the right thing in the right way. The Dundee-based firm's Speaker Verification uses the unique characteristics of the human voice to provide a secure biometric method of access, authentication and audit for a wide range of applications. The system can use verification methods which are either text-based or text independent and is claimed to give high rates of accuracy and scalability, together with an audit capability.

Businesses are at risk from fraud associated with security measures such as PIN's, passwords, keys and swipecards, which are capable of being stolen, lost or hacked and the SecuriVox Speaker Verification System has been developed to provide a reliable security mechanism based on the unique characteristics of the human voice. The technology can be implemented in conjunction with any device that has a microphone, for example, to authenticate PC-based internet or intranet access, to authorise purchasing and payments through call centres or mobile phones, or to secure access to buildings or machinery through circuit-board applications or smart card readers.

SecuriVox was founded in 2000 by Andy Sapeluk, a senior lecturer in computing at the University of Abertay, and became the University's first spin-out. In second round funding, the company secured more than £320k in a mix of debt and equity from the original investors, for further technical development and the start of commercialisation. The company has completed an online demonstrator for its client server product, SecuriVoxNet and is seeking partnerships with e-security solutions providers to implement this application. The funding round was managed by Sigma Technology Group plc and raised more than £320,000 through a mixture of debt and equity.

SecuriVox believe that market for voice biometrics is projected to grow significantly, thanks to the ubiquity of microphones many devices used for day-to-day business purposes, such as PC's, telephones, and increasingly, PDA's. The company is in a new phase of development to establish key partners to implement the SecuriVox proprietary system in a number of markets, including security, financial services, healthcare, telecoms and e-commerce."

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