Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) is software that converts spoken language into text. It powers voice assistants, call-center systems, dictation tools, and automated phone menus. In security-sensitive workflows, ASR often becomes the first step in deciding what a user can do, so its accuracy and confidence scoring matter as much as raw transcription quality.
Cyber criminals can abuse ASR by speaking phishing prompts into voice systems, replaying recorded audio, using synthetic voices, or hiding commands in background speech and noise. Errors can also create security problems when a system mishears a name, amount, or approval. Defenders reduce risk with strong confirmation steps, confidence thresholds, liveness checks, human handoff, and testing against accents, noise, and adversarial audio. Good ASR security is not just about understanding words; it is about knowing when not to trust them.