IBM BOFFINS in India have apparently developed technology which automatically indentifies and then disguises sensitive information in audio recordings.

The technology, developed in Big Blue Brother's India Research Laboratory (IRL), is purportedly especially handy for call centers that record conversations between customers and outsourced call centre workers.

IBM’s director of IRL, Guruduth Banavar, told PC world that the new technology used speech analytics as well as metadata in order to track down bits in the recording with sensitive information like a customer’s credit card number, PIN number, ID number, etc. Once it found the relevant audio segments, the technology could then cleverly disguise the secretive bits with tasteful white noise, elegant silence, or a sleek announcement noting that “the information you are not about to hear has been edited”.

Apparently the technology is still only in its pilot phase, within the company itself, and it may be a little while yet before it gets itself ‘outsourced to India’.

But call centres aren’t the only place IBM hopes to be able to deploy its new ‘delete’ tech. The company also thinks it could do some healthy business by applying it to other areas like medical diagnosis and to disguise recorded information used for training purposes.

We think that this all sounds a bit [This information has been deleted for security reasons]. µ

L’Inq
PC World