Although there have been significant security concerns surrounding digital assistants, a recent survey by Pindrop Security indicates that voice assistant usage in the enterprise market could triple within the next 12 months, with Cortana being the one most sought after.
Interestingly, earlier this year, Microsoft announced that Cortana was being moved to the Action Center on Windows 10, and more recently followed up by reports that the tech giant was repositioning the digital assistant as a productivity assistant rather than a personal one. By doing this, the company seemed to be promoting typing-based interactions with Cortana in favor of verbal ones. The results of the information security company"s survey are intriguing, to say the least, as they show a massive 78% of enterprise users investing in the tech giant"s famous voice assistant within the next two years, even though only a global average of 28% of businesses have currently embraced voice technology.
Based on the findings of the survey, this is how the adoption of digital assistants could look like in the future:
| Voice assistant technology | Voice assistant enterprise investment in next 2 years |
|---|---|
| Microsoft Cortana | 78% |
| Google’s Assistant | 78% |
| Amazon’s Echo | 77% |
| IBM’s Watson | 69% |
| Apple’s Siri | 68% |
| SAP’s Co-pilot | 64% |
| Samsung’s Bixby | 62% |
Even though around 85% of businesses are expected to use digital assistants by that time, it is still quite likely that customer fears over security could effect their growth. Vijay Balasubramaniyan, CEO and Co-founder of Pindrop, commented on such security concerns, noting:
"The proliferation of voice technologies will continue to put consumers’ security and identity at risk. Currently, fraudsters can easily get around existing authentication methods. As businesses adopt the latest voice technologies for the majority of customer interactions, there will be a parallel need for top-notch security."
It will be interesting to see whether Microsoft will indeed be able to edge ahead of close competitors, Google and Amazon, by massively increasing its enterprise user-base for Cortana in only a couple of years.
Source: Pindrop via Windows Latest