Echo Wang, David Shepardson

(Reuters] – TikTok nears a deal Oracle Corp (NYSE) will keep the U.S. user’s information safe from ByteDance in China. The move is intended to alleviate U.S. regulations regarding data integrity of the short-video app.

This agreement will be reached one year and half after ByteDance was ordered by the U.S. security panel to divest TikTok due to fears that U.S. data might be shared with China’s communist government.

This order was not implemented after Donald Trump became president. Sources said that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which is also known as the Panel on Foreign Investment in the United States, has been continuing to raise concerns regarding TikTok data security, something ByteDance hopes to resolve.

Sources said that it is unclear whether CFIUS will conclude that TikTok’s partnership will solve the national security problems it identified. CFIUS chaired by the U.S. Department of the Treasury did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

Oracle discussed the acquisition of a minority share in TikTok by 2020 when ByteDance was subject to U.S. demands for it. According to sources, all TikTok users in the United States will be stored on Oracle servers by the cloud computing company. Some TikTok user data currently resides on Alphabet (NASDAQ.) Inc’s Google Cloud.

The agreement will create a U.S. dedicated data management team consisting of hundreds of individuals who act as gatekeepers for U.S. users information and ringfencing it via ByteDance, according to the sources. This team will include cyber security specialists and engineers. According to sources, both companies have been discussing the structure that would allow this team to operate independently and without TikTok’s supervision or control.

According to sources, TikTok is looking at partnerships with other tech companies for firewalls or cyber security measures.

An Oracle spokesperson from TikTok declined to comment. The spokesperson for TikTok wrote an email stating that they continue to invest data security in order to protect our users’ information.

Oracle didn’t immediately reply to our requests for comment.

TikTok, which has more than 1,000,000 active users worldwide, is one of the most widely used social media platforms. TikTok currently stores the information of U.S users in Virginia with backups in Singapore.

App developers are being scrutinized more closely by the United States for personal data that they manage, particularly if it is related to U.S. intelligence or military personnel.

Chinese gaming firm Beijing Kunlun Tech Co Ltd had to close its gay dating app Grindr after CFIUS approached them with national security issues.

ByteDance ranks among the top-growing startups in China. It is the owner of Jinri Toutiao’s top news aggregator in China, and its Chinese counterpart Douyin.

U.S. Commerce Department has been considering rules that would address security concerns from TikTok or other foreign-owned applications. Some of these apps could even be banned. These rules, if approved, will force TikTok into third-party auditing and source code examination, as well as monitoring the user data logs.