Vietnam’s authorities has ordered expertise companies to retailer their customers’ information regionally and arrange native workplaces, its newest transfer to tighten cybersecurity guidelines.

The new guidelines, issued in a decree on Wednesday, will apply to social media corporations like Alphabet’s Google and Meta’s Facebook, and telecommunications operators, and can take impact on October 1.

“Data of all Internet users ranging from financial records and biometric data to information on peoples’ ethnicity and political views, or any data created by users while surfing the internet must be to stored domestically,” the decree acknowledged.

Authorities may have the proper to difficulty information assortment requests for objective of investigation and to ask service suppliers to take away content material whether it is deemed to violate the federal government’s tips, the decree added.

Foreign companies may have 12 months to arrange native information storage and consultant workplaces after receiving directions from the Minister of Public Security, and must retailer the information onshore for a minimal interval of 24 months, based on the decree.

Two tech companies contacted by Reuters, Google and Meta, didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.

Vietnam is run by the Communist Party, which maintains tight media censorship and tolerates little dissent. It has tightened Internet guidelines over the previous few years, culminating in a cybersecurity regulation that got here into impact in 2019 and nationwide tips on social media behaviour launched in June final yr.

© Thomson Reuters 2022