Was IBM Smart to Ban Siri?

In an effort to evade any security issues associated with Siri, IBM recently told its employees that they must disable the voice-activated feature or stop bringing their iPhones to work. This might come as a surprise to Siri-loving iPhone 4S users who can't live without the feature. But IBM IBM isn't taking any chances. "IBM Chief Information Officer Jeanette Horan gave an interview to MIT's Technology Review to discuss IBM's Bring Your Own Device policy," Goldman Sachs wrote in a report this morning. "Over 80,000 IBM employees have opted to use their own smartphones and tablets, she said, although IBM does require them to make some modifications in order to keep the network secure. Employee-owned devices must have certain third-party cloud features disabled and the remote wipe ability enabled. Employees must also disable Siri, the digital personal assistant that Apple introduced in the iPhone 4S, to assuage IBM of concerns that their spoken queries might be stored someplace." Goldman Sachs believes that network safety has been a critical challenge for CIOs looking to adopt Bring Your Own Device strategies within their organizations. "While it is somewhat surprising that Siri itself would be explicitly disabled, we think the BYOD trend overall could help boost demand for iPhones," Goldman Sachs continued. "Despite continued interest from CIOs (consistently demonstrated in our quarterly CIO surveys), iPhones remain more popular with consumers than with slow-changing enterprises. Given their own choice of device, however, we believe more employees would choose to bring iPhones into their enterprise (even if Siri has to stay outside)." Siri isn't the only thing IBM is concerned about. By banning cloud services, it has effectively eliminated Dropbox and iCloud, among other (similar) services. "Despite the security risks, apps like Dropbox and iCloud have extraordinarily useful applications, and denying access to them may limit employee productivity," The Mac Observer wrote last week. Did IBM Overreact or React Too Late? Has IBM already exposed itself by allowing cloud-based services to be used within the company? Possibly. We do not yet know the full extent of Siri's vulnerabilities, and Apple AAPL has yet to comment on IBM's decision. But in April, Dropbox's ChenLi Wang (head of business development) told InformationWeek that if you're in a highly sensitive or regulated field (such as defense, banking or healthcare), "our service as it stands today isn't a good fit." Perhaps IBM should have acted sooner. Follow me @LouisBedigianBZ