Australian Businesses Consider Banning TikTok in Workplace

TikTok logo on an iPhone in London on Feb. 28, 2023. (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Nearly half of Australia’s IT policymakers believe we should ban smartphone apps in the workplace, including restricting the Chinese social media app TikTok to protect sensitive business data, according to a new survey.

Many of these bans could extend to employees’ personal phones, with around 40 percent of managers considering restrictions on all devices used in the workplace, a survey by Canadian software company BlackBerry has found.

Jonathan Jackson, the engineering director of Blackberry, said the senate committee’s findings reflected widespread concerns about data security among Australian businesses.

“We are starting to receive lots of questions from chief information security officers or chief risk officers in enterprise and the public sector who want to see what controls can be implemented,” he told Australian Associated Press (AAP).

“It’s really hard to control the apps that people install on their personal devices, which have also got access to work data.”

The Blackberry survey included 250 Australian IT decision-makers, finding that 49 percent of them were implementing or considering a ban on social media apps on company-owned smartphones, while 42 percent were considering banning apps on employee-owned smartphones.

Forty-three percent of respondents strongly agree that companies should be able to control smartphone apps employees use, and 60 percent say contacts, personal data, and calendar information in their phones are most at risk.

The ByteDance logo is seen at the entrance to a ByteDance office in Beijing on July 8, 2020. (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)

Mr. Jackson said limiting employees’ use of apps on their own devices is difficult, yet it may be done by separating work from personal apps or controlling their use at the network level.

“We are expecting [the number of] bans to increase,” he said. “A blanket ban [on TikTok] is probably unlikely at this stage, and that’s mainly because there needs to be a balance between what users want and what information is stored in devices from a company perspective.”

Lawmakers Suggest Ban on TikTok Extend to WeChat

The BlackBerry survey comes a week after an Australian Senate inquiry made recommendations about apps owned by China and Russia, including extending the government’s ban on TikTok to the Chinese instant messaging app WeChat.

“Platforms like TikTok and WeChat that are subject to the control of authoritarian regimes illustrate the broader cyber security risk to sensitive government information,” Liberal Party Senator James Paterson, the chair of the Committee on Foreign Interference through Social Media, said in a statement.

TikTok, owned by Chinese firm ByteDance, was banned from all Australian government devices in April over security concerns.

The move brings Australia into line with its Five Eyes allies and nine other countries and multinational organisations, including the UK, the United States, India, Canada, New Zealand, Taiwan, the Netherlands, France, Denmark, Norway, Pakistan, and the EU.

WeChat app on a smartphone in a photo illustration taken on July 13, 2021. (Dado Ruvic/Reuters)

TikTok Denies Data Security Allegations

TikTok Australia General Manager Lee Hunter denied any issue with data security, saying that there is no evidence to suggest TikTok is a security risk.

“We are extremely disappointed by this decision, which, in our view, is driven by politics, not by fact. We are also disappointed that TikTok, and the millions of Australians who use it, were left to learn of this decision through the media, despite our repeated offers to engage with the government constructively about this policy,” he previously told The Epoch Times in an email.

“Again, we stress that there is no evidence to suggest that TikTok is in any way a security risk to Australians and should not be treated differently to other social media platforms.”

However, the chief strategy officer at CyberCX Australia, Alastair MacGibbon, pushed back on Hunter’s comments, saying TikTok has a history of denying it actually breaches privacy.

“For example, in December last year, you had them admitting to tracking journalists using their own app to look for what the sources of information were that journalists were using,” MacGibbon told Radio National on April 4.

“The CEO, in front of Congress, just recently denied that they would access data but then admitted under questioning that if asked or compelled by the Chinese Communist Party that he would provide data, so the denials are worthless.”

AAP and Victoria Kelly-Clark contributed to this report.