Tiktok Gets Oracle Deal

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Tiktok Gets Oracle Deal

TikTok Partners Oracle To Store US Users Data

TikTok is on the verge of closing a deal with Oracle Corp to store information of its users from the United States without providing access to its parent company ByteDance. The measure is to address the concerns of the country's regulatory body over data integrity.

About a year and a half the national security panel asked the Chinese company ByteDance to divest in the video streaming subsidiary amid fears the data could be secretly passed on to the Chinese government.

However, the new Joe Biden government didn't enforce the order while the panel continued harboring concerns over the data security part. It is yet to understand whether the deal with Oracle would address the existing concern.

In 2020, Oracle was in discussion to acquire a small stake in TikTok following the regulators' immense pressure on ByteDance to sell it. Under the new deal, the company is supposed to store user data on its own data servers. Some US user data is now being stored on the Google Cloud of Alphabet.

Hundreds of people comprising of cyber security personnel and engineers would be employed in the data management team to ringfence the user information from the Chinese company. It is learned the new team would be operating autonomously. It will not work under the supervision or control of TikTok.

Meanwhile, it is learned TikTok is simultaneously exploring similar partnerships with other tech companies. A spokesperson said they are investing in data security to keep the information of users safe.

Lately, theUS has been scrutinizing app developers in terms of data handling and particularly if there is an involvement of intelligence personnel or the military.

TikTok is highly popular among young people. It is a social video app equipped with about 1 billion active users across the world. Its US data is currently being stored in Virginia, where the company maintains its own data center. A backup of the same is stored in Singapore.

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