I recently interviewed Australian Health Management's operations manager, Melinda Charlesworth, for my podcast. She was discussing the company's deployment of a voice biometric system.

Instead of asking callers those annoying questions (date of birth, address, mother's maiden name etc) the company now uses a voiceprint ID to authenticate 8,500 of its 135,000 members. Once a member is set up, all they have to do is read their membership number to an IVR and whammo -- they're identified and authenticated.

AHM had its lawyers examine the Privacy Act to make sure voiceprint authentication was robust enough, and apparently it's kosher.

The nice part is it's cutting call times down by a minute a piece. With 400,000 calls coming in each year, it means the new system will pay for itself within 12 months.

This is the sort of no-fuss stuff we really should be seeing more of. A simple, cheap security technology which saves organisations time and money. And contrary to much of the buzz, Charlesworth says the system is reliable. You can hear that interview here.