New Zealand to ban TikTok on devices linked to parliament, cites security concerns - Reuters

The depth of those concerns was underscored this week when the Biden administration demanded that TikTok's Chinese owners divest their stakes or the app could face a U.S. ban.

Parliamentary Service Chief Executive Rafael Gonzalez-Montero said in an email to Reuters that the decision was taken after advice from cybersecurity experts and discussions within government and with other countries.

"Departments and agencies follow the advice of the (Government Communications Security Bureau) in terms of IT and cybersecurity policies ... we don't have a blanket across the public sector approach," Hipkins said.

Both New Zealand's defence force and Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said on Friday they had already implemented bans on TikTok on work devices.

TikTok has said it believes the recent bans are based on "fundamental misconceptions" and driven by wider geopolitics, adding that it has spent more than $1.5 billion on rigorous data security efforts and rejects spying allegations.

Reporting by Lucy Craymer in Wellington, Lewis Jackson and Renju Jose in Sydney and Josh Ye in Hong Kong; Editing by Anne Marie Roantree, Muralikumar Anantharaman, Edwina Gibbs and Gerry Doyle