BURLINGTON, MA, January 27, 2011 – Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) today announced Version 7.0 of Nuance VocalPassword™ and Nuance FreeSpeech™, which provide underlying technology for the world’s largest customer-facing voice biometrics deployments. These solutions handle millions of voiceprints and help address the security demands of leading financial institutions, telecom service providers, healthcare providers, enterprises, and law enforcement and government agencies.

Nuance’s enhanced voice biometrics portfolio draws upon the innovation and technology leadership of PerSay, a voice biometric company that Nuance acquired in 2010. The combination has accelerated innovation and the benefits that customers can achieve from deploying voice biometric solutions, including customer identification and verification across contact center, mobile devices and internet application environments. Further, these voice biometric solutions help businesses address critical security requirements such as risk management, regulatory compliance, and fraud and identify theft.

Nuance’s VocalPassword targets automated remote verification based on an individual’s voice, while Nuance FreeSpeech performs verification and fraud detection in the background of conversations between callers and agents in the contact center.

“Enterprises have long been interested in the promise of voice biometrics to improve security and customer satisfaction,” said Ryan Joe, associate analyst at Ovum Research. “By acquiring PerSay, Nuance has gained significant technology assets, bolstering its own capabilities to deliver solutions that ensure a personalized and secure user experience.”

“At Bank Leumi, safeguarding our customers from fraud and providing a positive customer experience is of number one importance to us,” added Zahi Ovdat, head of contact centers project administration, Bank Leumi. “Through the new capabilities delivered in VocalPassword 7.0, we will be able to provide enhanced accuracy and secure all our customer interactions via multi-factor authentication.”

“The combination of Nuance and PerSay is exciting for us, as we are now able to deliver the next generation of secure voice biometrics solutions, the first of many to the market,” stated Dan Faulkner, vice president of product management & marketing, Nuance Communications. “Integrating the new versions of VocalPassword and FreeSpeech into the Nuance portfolio underscores our commitment to help businesses ensure secure, convenient interactions and transactions in the global commerce and customer service marketplace.”

Nuance VocalPassword employs a multi-engine capability that will enable the support of the legacy verification product Nuance Verifier 4, and will enable existing customers to seamlessly migrate their applications to the new product line.

Nuance’s voice biometrics platform delivers an array of new capabilities:

• Provides text-dependent, text-independent, and text-prompted engines to deliver higher accuracy and flexibility.
• Prevents identity theft via new fraud detection and its ability to mitigate interception and vhishing (voice phishing).
• Delivers advanced tools for configuration and setup, system monitoring, and other day-to-day activities such as end-user support.
• Supports integrated security, with role-based authorization now containing an improved encryption mechanism that supports custom (customer-provided) encryption – for increased security.
• Supports full multi-tenancy, enabling a single system to support multiple voice biometrics applications using different algorithmic engines and configuration setting.
• New installation kit supports multi-server, multi-site and high-availability deployments, and a flexible licensing mechanism.

For more information: http://enterprise.nuance.com/voice-biometrics

About Nuance Communications

Nuance is a leading provider of speech, imaging and customer interaction solutions for businesses and consumers around the world. Its technologies, applications and services make the user experience more compelling by transforming the way people interact with information and how they create, share and use documents. Every day, millions of users and thousands of businesses experience Nuance’s proven applications and professional services. For more information, please visit www.nuance.com.

Nuance and the Nuance logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Nuance Communications, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States of America and/or other countries. All other company names or product names may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

The statements in this press release relating to future plans, events or services, are forward-looking statements which are subject to specific risks and uncertainties. There are a number of factors which could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those indicated in such forward looking statements, including fluctuations in demand for the our products and services. The reader is warned not to rely on these forward-looking statements without reservation, since these are simply reflections of the current situation. Nuance disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of developments occurring after the date of this document.