Image: Reuters Berita 24 English - TikTok announced that it has completed the migration of data on its US users to Oracle Corp. servers, wh...
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| Image: Reuters |
Berita 24 English - TikTok announced that it has completed the migration of data on its US users to Oracle Corp. servers, which might address US regulatory concerns about data integrity on the popular short video app.
The action comes nearly two years after a US national security council ordered parent company ByteDance to sell TikTok due to concerns that user data from the United States could be handed on to China's communist government.
TikTok is one of the most popular social media apps in the world, with over 1 billion active users worldwide and the United States as its largest market.
The US has been expanding its scrutiny of app developers for the personal data they manage, particularly if it involves US military or intelligence employees.
After Joe Biden succeeded Donald Trump as president of the United States last year, the order to sell off TikTok was not carried out.
According to Reuters, the body, known as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), has continued to have concerns about TikTok's data security, which ByteDance is now attempting to remedy.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment, and the US Treasury declined to comment.
Reuters reported in March that TikTok was close to finalising a contract with Oracle Corp to keep the data of its US customers.
When ByteDance was under pressure from the US to sell TikTok in 2020, Oracle contemplated buying a minority stake in the app. According to TikTok, the cloud computing giant now keeps all of TikTok's U.S. user data on Oracle data servers in the US as part of the new agreement.
Oracle did not respond to requests for comment.
TEAM FOR DATA SECURITY
TikTok had previously kept its U.S. user data in its own Virginia data facilities, with a backup in Singapore. It will now remove all private data about US users from its own data centres and rely entirely on Oracle's US servers, according to the company.
The data is still being backed up at the Virginia and Singapore centres, according to the business.
According to a company spokeswoman, TikTok has also established a specific US data security team known as "USDS" as a gatekeeper for US user data and ringfencing it from ByteDance.
The USDS is led by Andrew Bonillo, a former executive at TikTok's global security department, and reports to TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, according to a spokesman.
According to Reuters, the business is exploring a framework in which the team would function independently and not be subject to TikTok's oversight or monitoring.
Will Farrell, who previously worked under TikTok's Chief Security Officer Roland Cloutier, is another top executive at USDS. Content moderation staff, developers, and individuals from user and product operations make up the USDS team.
ByteDance is one of China's most rapidly developing companies. It owns Jinri Toutiao, the country's top news aggregator, as well as Douyin, TikTok's Chinese counterpart.
In June 2021, Biden rescinded Trump-era administrative orders that tried to prohibit new WeChat and TikTok downloads. New rules on app data security are being written by the Commerce Department, which could lead to restrictions on how foreign-based applications utilise U.S. user data or possibly the banning of apps regarded to be major security hazards.
Last year, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo claimed the administration is "extremely serious about protecting Americans' data," but she chastised Trump's strategy.
"Doing some worthless executive order on TikTok is not the way to achieve it," she remarked.
