NASHVILLE, Tenn.–Should a credit union allow employees to have Tik Tok on their phones? One security expert didn’t need a video to make his position clear.
It’s a security issue that has been debated at numerous CUs, as Tik Tok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company, and a federal ban on Tik Tok has been on and off again.
During Origence’s Lending Tech Live event, Lt Gen. (Ret) BJ Shwedo, a cybersecurity expert with four master’s degrees in national security and intelligence who is SVP for Special Programs at Pentagon FCU, was asked by one CU about a “huge discussion” at his credit union over Tik Tok and whether employees should be allowed to have the app on the phones they bring to work.
Shwedo responded by sharing some details around several security-related issues related to Tik Tok, including how the company has used its access to data in the past against those individuals, as well as how some workers who have the app on their phones have had it used to steal data even when the user themselves had never actually been on Tik Tok.
Making clear where he stands on the question, Shwedo responded, “Where I work (PenFed) you don’t have TikTok on your company phone.”
