Release date: 05/04/23

TikTok has been banned from South Australian Government devices after an assessment that the application poses significant security and privacy risks.

After receiving advice from intelligence and security agencies, the Commonwealth Attorney General yesterday announced a ban on the app on devices issued by Commonwealth departments and agencies.

The South Australian ruling issued under the SA Cyber Security Framework will require agencies remove existing instances of TikTok and prevent the installation of TikTok on government issued devices.

Limited exemptions may be sought for legitimate business reasons, however any move to install the application must be approved by security advisors and will require appropriate risk mitigation strategies be in place.

The ruling does not affect the use of TikTok on personal devices. However, it does require agencies which allow the use of personal devices to access official sensitive or security classified data to formally assess the risk of TikTok.

Quotes

Attributable to Peter Malinauskas

We’re taking swift action to ban TikTok on official government devices, based upon the best advice from state and federal security advisors.

This is a prudent measure to protect the security of government information.

For government employees, this means we’ll be requiring them to delete the app from any official devices and preventing it from being downloaded in future.