Article Preview
Top1. Introduction
The Internet-of-Things (IoT) brought in the rapid expansion of wearable and connected devices that offer new ways to develop smart applications that drive efficiencies, engage users, and develop new businesses with more significant insights at the Intelligent Edge and on the cloud. These technologies are invading every aspect of our lives, including our homes, offices, and health, and the military and aviation, etc. Increasing in elderly population IoT technologies are being deployed to improve the quality of life and make life easier for seniors. Examples of IoT applications include using voice command to turn on a light or using a phone to turn on or off light or using smart watch to help track sleep pattern or fitness device to transmit data to a doctor or a nurse so they can help monitor your activity. Other examples include using a smart speaker like Amazon Echo or Google Home to play music, hear the weather forecast, or even get help with a recipe.
Having access to IoT devices requires authentication for secure communication. Thus, authentication forms the gateway for a secure communication system with IoT since it is the most common method that allows the users to have access to IoT devices.
The most common authentication methods used in IoT include: the use of a piece of information the user knows (e.g., secret questions, passwords, PINs), owns (e.g., ID cards, mobile phones, tokens) or information they inherited (e.g., biometrics, fingerprints, iris scans, signatures) (Fu, 2015). Strong authentication systems help to reduce potential fraudsters and other hackers from gaining access to sensitive information on IoT technologies. Biometrics presents an intriguing window of opportunity to improve IoT usability and security and can play a critical role in protecting a wide range of developing IoT devices to address security challenges and are predicted to target future applications of IoT (Yang et al., 2021).
The human voice is one of the most natural, non-intrusive and convenient behavioural biometric factors in comparison to other biometric factors. Subsequently, the usage of voice biometric authentication in IoT technology is being heavily considered as a promising means of IoT authentication for many reasons (Ortega-Garcia et al., 2004). These include not requiring the user to remember any pins or passwords, users constantly being verified - hence fraudsters are more easily caught, and verification being done over standard telephones lines through already implemented infrastructure (Tupman, 2018). Also, unlike knowledge-based factors, it does not fall to the user to create a strong authentication, as shown with passwords, where many users use weak or even default passwords allowing hackers easy access to accounts whether it be children from lack of cognitive ability or adults who don’t understand the importance of strong cyber security (Choong et al., 2019).
With voice biometric authentication being such a promising development when it comes to secure user authentication, it is of interest to consider the user’s current perspectives of the authentication to better understand if users would first be willing to use the technology especially when compared with traditional means of authentication. As despite all the advantages and non-intrusive characteristics of voice biometric over other biometric features, voice biometric authentication has been brought under scrutiny for many reasons including: the accuracy of biometric data, the risk of theft and imitation and a general societal feeling of distrust with technology to handle their privacy-sensitive information and biometric data securely, preventing full adoption of voice biometric authentication systems. Other lingering concerns about the security of voice biometric systems include potential breaches of privacy, adversary attacks such as Spoofing attack (Marcel et al., 2019), presentation attacks (Korshunov & Marcel, 2017) and Replay-attacks (Lavrentyeva et al., 2017) may cause a user distrust to technology.