First IBM blocked Siri. Now it seems that the company is continuing with its ongoing process and, as per latest reports, is planning to block some other very popular applications like Apple's iCloud and Dropbox as a data security measure.
Earlier IBM blocked Siri, Apple's voice dictation feature, on iPhones which the company's employees were using for work purposes, and cited its data storage capabilities as a threat to the company's security.
"We're just extraordinarily conservative," IBM's chief information officer, Jeanette Horan told Technology Review. "It's the nature of our business."
Apple's software license agreement states "When you use Siri or Dictation, the things you say will be recorded and sent to Apple in order to convert what you say into text and, for Siri, to also process your requests."
Although Apple had never made it clear about whether it stored that data, who accessed it and how long it would be stored in the server, the global leader in technology and innovation was concerned that Siri is storing user queries that could lead to security breach.
While no other companies, as of now, has blocked Siri, some have blocked Google's services for the same reasons of storing sensitive data on Google's servers.
Meanwhile, Chicago-based intellectual property lawyer Evan Brown in his blog has illustrated IBM's decision of blocking the Apple and Dropbox services stating, "[A] company can enforce its exclusive rights to possess and use information that (1) gives that company a competitive advantage, and (2) which is subject to efforts to keep secret. That latter part-keeping the information secret-is a big reason for nondisclosure agreements, password protected servers, and sensible restrictions on employee use of third party technologies (like social media and search tools like Siri)."
