TikTok seeks to protect the security of its U.S. platform
In a move designed to handle questions about the storage of data belonging to U.S. TikTok users, the short-form video app is believed to have completed the migration of data related to its U.S. customers to servers at Oracle. This move could satisfy the demands of U.S. regulatory agencies who had concerns about the integrity of the data collected on the app.
Trump's election loss to Biden allowed TikTok to remain out of the hands of U.S. companies
As reported by Reuters, this move comes a couple of years after a national security panel ordered TikTok parent ByteDance to divest Itself of TikTok in order to prevent the communist Chinese government from collecting U.S. user data. But that order was never completed after Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump to win the U.S. presidency. The national security panel, known as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), continues to mention its fears over data security at TikTok.
TikTok has moved the storage of U.S. user data to servers owned by Oracle
The U.S. has been focusing on app developers and the personal information that they keep an eye on, especially data that belongs to U.S. military or intelligence personnel. In the blog post it published on Friday, TikTok wrote that it has "long stored U.S. user data in its own data centers in the US and Singapore. In the blog post, TikTok notes that "our Virginia data center includes physical and logical safety controls such as gated entry points, firewalls, and intrusion detection technologies."
TikTok added that "It's also important to maintain backup data storage locations to guard against catastrophic scenarios where user data could be lost. The company added that "our data center in Singapore serves as the backup data storage location for our U.S. users."
You might recall that Oracle was once one of three American companies involved in talks to purchase the popular app. The other two firms included Microsoft and Walmart. TikTok's proprietary servers eventually will be deleted and as the company said, "Today, 100% of U.S. user traffic is being routed to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. We still use our U.S. and Singapore data centers for backup, but as we continue our work, we expect to delete U.S. users' private data from our own data centers and fully pivot to Oracle cloud servers located in the states.
TikTok aims to remove any doubt about the security of the data centers used in the U.S.
TikTok has also set up a dedicated U.S. data security team known as "USDS" to act as a gatekeeper for U.S. user information. The USDS team seeks to protect the data collected from U.S. users. "We know we are among the most scrutinized platforms from a security standpoint, and we aim to remove any doubt about the security of U.S. user data," the social media firm said. "We're dedicated to earning and maintaining the trust of our community and will continue to work every day to protect our platform and provide a safe, welcoming, and enjoyable experience for our community.
Commerce Department secretary Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said last year that the administration is "very serious about protecting Americans' data," but criticized Trump's approach. "Doing some executive order that's meaningless on TikTok is not the way to force change on the platform,"Raimondo said."
TikTok has over one billion active users globally and the U.S. is its largest market. During the first quarter of 2022, TikTok was the most downloaded app world wide becoming just the fifth app in history to have lifetime downloads over 3.5 billion. The other four apps to reach this figure are all owned by Meta. Since the start of 2018, no app has been installed on devices more than TikTok.
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