Siri has had her visitor badge revoked at IBM. Apparently she can't keep quiet about what she hears. Although IBM has allowed the iPhone 4S and other employee-owned consumer smartphones and tablets, like so many other companies barraged by their smartphone-toting workers, company chief information officer Jeanette Horan has said it's been more of a migraine than a cost-saving solution. "We found a tremendous lack of awareness as to what constitutes a risk," Horan recently told MIT's Technology Review. Now they're trying to educate their employees. Many voice-recognition services like Siri actually transmit the words spoken to them to a database, so they can get smarter, grow their vocabulary and learn different accents. But loose lips, however seemingly benign or even academic in nature, are counter to the secretive and competitive nature of business. For decades, corporate information technology departments held the keys to mobile communication. They portioned out the devices that they configured with approved software and, to that end, controlled what got in and out of the company.

But now there's a bit of a potluck approach to communications, with everyone from the CEO down bringing in their own device whether smartphone or tablet. "It's the consumerisation of IT," Vincent Schiavo, chief executive of DeviceLock, said. There's an overall mingling of personal and professional in terms of content stored on employee-bought devices. "Inevitably stuff ends merging and leaking out," Schiavo said.