Russia and China residents will not be able to occupy positions in Gitlab that provide access to customer data

In the middle of last month, GitLab decided to introduce restrictions for employees with access to these customers. Russians and Chinese residents will not be able to occupy some positions in Gitlab.

Now a number of posts are closed for people living in Russia and China. Note, in this case, the talk is about the country of current residence, and not the country of origin.

It is noted that this ban is caused by “concerns of some corporate clients.”

“In e-group on Monday October 15, 2019 we took the decision to enable a “job family country-of-residence block” for team members who have access to customer data. This is at the expressed concern of several enterprise customers, and also what is becoming a common practice in our industry in the current geopolitical climate”, — wrote Eric Johnson, VP of Engineering at GitLab.

Gitlab employees from these countries will no longer be able to occupy positions that provide access to these customers, for example, work in the technical support service or in the security sector. However, this innovation will not affect existing employees.

“We feel a country block is the most humane solution at this time–especially because it affects zero current employees”, — note in GitLab.

However, new workers from Russia and China will no longer be able to hold a number of posts. Although it is not planned to completely abandon the recruitment of personnel in these countries. If one of the current employees decides to move to these countries, then he will not be able to maintain a position with access to customer data.

Read also: Web.com domain registrar reports potential leak

Discussions began the day after CrowdStrike published a report detailing how Chinese cyber espionage agents hire insiders in Western companies to help hackers steal intellectual property (IP) to help state-owned companies build a competitor’s Comac C919 Boeing.

There is a general opinion that both Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies can use the same project and plant agents or force GitLab employees to transfer data belonging to Western companies.