The Department of Homeland Security has ordered federal civilian agencies to remove Chinese AI company DeepSeek’s products from government IT systems and prohibit future purchases, according to a Federal Register notice published October 20.
The order also covers DeepSeek affiliates and third-party products or services developed using DeepSeek technology. DHS cited concerns that sensitive government information could be transferred to China, along with potential malware, security vulnerabilities and data collection risks.
Agencies must remove affected products or seek an exception. DHS also recommends enhanced network monitoring, logging and controls to detect potential data exfiltration. The order does not apply to private businesses or consumers.
Seemant Sehgal, Founder & CEO, BreachLock said this:
“The order prompts the harder internal question for private sector security leaders, which is whether the data an employee pasted into DeepSeek last month to summarize a document is now part of someone else’s training set. Shadow AI usage has been running ahead of governance in most enterprises for at least the past year. The specific risk the DHS order names, which is that queries and attached data pass through infrastructure outside allied jurisdictions, applies to any employee using any foreign AI service that offers free access.
“The affiliates and third-party products clause in the order is where this gets harder, because an employee does not need to use DeepSeek directly to send data to it. A commercial product built on DeepSeek technology would route the same queries through the same infrastructure without the user ever knowing which model was handling the request.”
Organizations need to make sure that DeepSeek or its variants doesn’t make it into your environment. That is likely to be very, very bad.
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This entry was posted on October 20, 2026 at 3:51 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags DHS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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DHS bans DeepSeek AI products across federal civilian agencies
The Department of Homeland Security has ordered federal civilian agencies to remove Chinese AI company DeepSeek’s products from government IT systems and prohibit future purchases, according to a Federal Register notice published October 20.
The order also covers DeepSeek affiliates and third-party products or services developed using DeepSeek technology. DHS cited concerns that sensitive government information could be transferred to China, along with potential malware, security vulnerabilities and data collection risks.
Agencies must remove affected products or seek an exception. DHS also recommends enhanced network monitoring, logging and controls to detect potential data exfiltration. The order does not apply to private businesses or consumers.
Seemant Sehgal, Founder & CEO, BreachLock said this:
“The order prompts the harder internal question for private sector security leaders, which is whether the data an employee pasted into DeepSeek last month to summarize a document is now part of someone else’s training set. Shadow AI usage has been running ahead of governance in most enterprises for at least the past year. The specific risk the DHS order names, which is that queries and attached data pass through infrastructure outside allied jurisdictions, applies to any employee using any foreign AI service that offers free access.
“The affiliates and third-party products clause in the order is where this gets harder, because an employee does not need to use DeepSeek directly to send data to it. A commercial product built on DeepSeek technology would route the same queries through the same infrastructure without the user ever knowing which model was handling the request.”
Organizations need to make sure that DeepSeek or its variants doesn’t make it into your environment. That is likely to be very, very bad.
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This entry was posted on October 20, 2026 at 3:51 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags DHS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.