The door for the time being was closed by IBM on Siri. IBM is worried Siri cannot remain quiet and that to IBM is dangerous. IBM has allowed Apple products like the iPhone 4s and other consumer smartphones that are employee owned as well as tablets. However, Jeannette Horan, Big Blue’s Chief Information Officer said it has been more of a headache than a cost saver.
“We determined there was a tremendous lack of an understanding as to what is a legitimate risk,” Horan said. At this point, they are attempting to educate everyone.
A number of voice-recognition services such as Siri transmit the each word that is spoken to them back to a database so they will become smarter, increase their vocabulary and learn accents from different regions in the world. However, loose lips seemingly academic in nature or benign, counteract the competitive and secretive nature of business.
However, now there is more of a potluck approach to controlling communications, with staff from the CEO down using their own mobile device whether it is a tablet or smartphone.
Because of that, IBM requires devices to be examined and then detoxed if needed, before a device from the outside can be used on the company network. The department of IT at IBM sets it up to remotely delete its entire memory if the device is stolen or lost.