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The new measures follow critical data protection failures.
China's Ministry of State Security has warned office workers about the risks of spying when using online tools for work, noting that data leaks due to them have "occurred repeatedly" in recent years.
On its official WeChat page, the ministry said that many online platforms have powerful features that combine social and work opportunities. Examples included tools for instant communication, format conversion, file transfer, and group discussions. Uploading confidential files to such platforms increases the risk of their theft by foreign intelligence agencies, and this should be "strictly prohibited", the ministry stressed.
Special attention was paid to a product called File Transfer Assistant, which provides similar services to WeChat's file backup service, allowing users to send files to themselves. The Ministry noted that employees uploading classified documents from their personal devices to such cloud storages "significantly increases the risk" of their theft by Trojan viruses.
"The server of the file transfer software provider easily gets access to confidential documents and cannot effectively control the amount of access provided, which easily leads to data leakage," the ministry said.
It also warned of the risks of information leaks when using optical character recognition (OCR) software to extract text from images in confidential files and when entering confidential information to generate text in AI programs.
In June, the Chinese espionage agency warned government officials against storing classified information on cloud services, as cloud data has become "the main object of interest for foreign intelligence agencies."
The following month, Tencent suspended all file uploads to another cloud service, WeCloud, and announced it would cease operations in October due to a "business restructuring." In a notice on the WeCloud website, the company encouraged users to back up their files and promised to refund money to subscribers of the service.
China's Ministry of State Security launched its WeChat page in July last year to counter Western criticism of its national security measures and engage the public in counterintelligence activities.
These measures are part of a broad campaign to protect information amid technological competition and geopolitical tensions with the United States. In May, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued test rules for industrial and IT companies to conduct data security risk assessments, as China lags behind the West in data protection.
As part of these efforts, a large — scale revision of the law on state secrets is also being carried out, expanding the list of restricted information, including "work secrets" - information that is not a state secret, but can "cause certain negative consequences in the event of a leak."
Source
China's Ministry of State Security has warned office workers about the risks of spying when using online tools for work, noting that data leaks due to them have "occurred repeatedly" in recent years.
On its official WeChat page, the ministry said that many online platforms have powerful features that combine social and work opportunities. Examples included tools for instant communication, format conversion, file transfer, and group discussions. Uploading confidential files to such platforms increases the risk of their theft by foreign intelligence agencies, and this should be "strictly prohibited", the ministry stressed.
Special attention was paid to a product called File Transfer Assistant, which provides similar services to WeChat's file backup service, allowing users to send files to themselves. The Ministry noted that employees uploading classified documents from their personal devices to such cloud storages "significantly increases the risk" of their theft by Trojan viruses.
"The server of the file transfer software provider easily gets access to confidential documents and cannot effectively control the amount of access provided, which easily leads to data leakage," the ministry said.
It also warned of the risks of information leaks when using optical character recognition (OCR) software to extract text from images in confidential files and when entering confidential information to generate text in AI programs.
In June, the Chinese espionage agency warned government officials against storing classified information on cloud services, as cloud data has become "the main object of interest for foreign intelligence agencies."
The following month, Tencent suspended all file uploads to another cloud service, WeCloud, and announced it would cease operations in October due to a "business restructuring." In a notice on the WeCloud website, the company encouraged users to back up their files and promised to refund money to subscribers of the service.
China's Ministry of State Security launched its WeChat page in July last year to counter Western criticism of its national security measures and engage the public in counterintelligence activities.
These measures are part of a broad campaign to protect information amid technological competition and geopolitical tensions with the United States. In May, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued test rules for industrial and IT companies to conduct data security risk assessments, as China lags behind the West in data protection.
As part of these efforts, a large — scale revision of the law on state secrets is also being carried out, expanding the list of restricted information, including "work secrets" - information that is not a state secret, but can "cause certain negative consequences in the event of a leak."
Source
