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Siri is that trusted iPhone assistant who you believe is talking
directly and only to you. Siri has become a useful resource
for many – someone to assist with dictation or Web
searches, or someone to simply act as your own George Glass when
you've got no one else (I've been looking to make my first
Brady Bunch reference for some time).
But here too is a potential concern for employers in an area
that we have been discussing with greater frequency: the
protection of trade secrets and avoidance of data breaches.
Because of concerns over Siri's loose lips, IBM recently
decided to ban employee conversations with Siri in its
workplaces. As Max
Eddy at Geekosystem describes the Siri process, "Siri
works by recording your query, whisking it away to a data
processing center over your data connection, and then returning the
results. The heavy lifting of natural language processing is
done elsewhere, as well as on your phone. Apple stores your
voice queries at its data center in order to improve Siri's
results."
And that's precisely IBM's concern. Not only
that its sensitive information may be leaked to the public (even
unwittingly), but that it is maintained as well by its big
competitor and Siri creator – Apple. According to MIT's "Technology Review",
IBM's Chief Information Officer described IBM's concern as
follows:
"IBM fears that using such software could allow
confidential information to get loose. In the survey, other
employees were found to be violating protocol by automatically
forwarding their IBM e-mail to public Web mail services or using
their smart phones to create open Wi-Fi hotspots, which make data
vulnerable to snoops."
As a result, "IBM even turns off Siri, the voice-activated
personal assistant, on employees' iPhones. The company worries
that the spoken queries, which are uploaded to Apple servers, could
ultimately reveal sensitive information."
I can already see it now. I will soon be reporting
on the new employee defense in a trade secret disclosure
lawsuit: "It wasn't me, it was Siri."
Employer Take Away: What should you
as an employer take away from this
development?
I will leave it up to you to decide whether or not IBM has
overreacted to this new technology for purposes of its workplace
ban. But your takeaway is that, as with IBM's
information, there can be no price tag placed on the loss of your
company's valuable trade secrets and other proprietary
information. So it is wise to make sure that you continue to
do everything possible to minimize data breaches and information
disclosure by creating policies and protocols that protect your
valuable interests. And in 2012, you need to make
sure those efforts take into account the latest in social media and
technology advances.
It's not just the rogue employee your company needs to worry
about; for even information inadvertently disclosed is,
still, disclosed.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general
guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought
about your specific circumstances.
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