if available are passed through the channel to the network in s 404 in s 410 the authentication system performs an authentication dialog which will be further discussed in connection with fig5 below after the authentication dialog the authentication system passes its conclusion to the applications in s 420 in s 422 if additional authentication is required the application collects and passes additional data to the authentication system in s 424 the authentication system again conducts the appropriate dialog if additional authentication is not required in s 422 then the application fulfills the customer request in s 426 the process ends in s 430 fig5 is a flow chart illustrating an authentication dialog in accordance with an embodiment of the invention in s 500 the authentication dialog begins in s 502 the authentication engine performs a transaction risk assessment by obtaining information from the risk assessment engine the information may include one or more of data and conclusions in s 504 the authentication engine requests policy from the policy rule engine in s 508 the authentication engine executes policy rules sets to determine whether based on existing information a customer can be authenticated and or by determining what additional information is necessary in order to authenticate a customer in s 510 the authentication engine logs outcomes the process ends in s 514 fig6 is a block diagram illustrating a servicing application process when operating in conjunction with an authentication system 200 in accordance with an embodiment of the invention a servicing application 600 determines qualifies and validates a request at 610 at 620 the application determines if the customer service request exceeds the tier.