IBM blocking Siri on employees’ iPhones due to security concerns

The “bring your own device” policy in place at many companies comes with a host of security complications, and Apple’s Siri is the latest casualty. In an interview with MIT’s Technology Review, IBM Chief Information Officer Jeanette Horan said that among other services, iPhone personal assistant Siri is disabled on phones that employees bring in for work. IBM apparently worries that spoken instructions to Siri might be stored on external servers, something that could have security repercussions if users dictate messages through it.

Horan admits that this may seem extreme. “We’re just extraordinarily conservative... It’s the nature of our business.” Besides Siri, public file sharing tools like iCloud and Dropbox are disabled, and employees are banned from forwarding IBM email to external webmail services. As Wired points out, Apple’s terms of service state that users of Siri or Dictation consent to “Apple’s and its subsidiaries’ and agents’ transmission, collection, maintenance, processing, and use of this information, including your voice input and User Data, to provide and improve Siri, Dictation, and other Apple products and services.” For IBM, this means that data collected by Siri is out of its control. We’ve reached out to Apple and IBM for comment, but for now we doubt the two companies will come to an agreement.