Security minister Tom Tugendhat on Tuesday confirmed he has asked the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) to assess the “challenges” posed by apps such as TikTok.
It comes one day after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told the BBC that ministers “take security of devices seriously” and are looking at “what our allies are doing” with regard to the Chinese social media app.
There have long been security concerns around TikTok, whose parent company ByteDance, while incorporated in the Cayman Islands, is based in Beijing, leading to a growing number of governments banning the app from official devices.
Asked whether he wants to see TikTok banned from government phones, Tugendhat told “Sky News Breakfast” that he doesn’t have the app on his phone for “reasons you can probably guess,” but “understanding exactly what the challenges that these apps pose and what they are asking for and how they’re reaching into our lives is incredibly important.”…