DHS Order Barring DeepSeek AI Use by Federal Government Agencies

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) upped the ante for AI Governance by issuing an order, published in the Federal Register on October 20, 2026, barring the use of DeepSeek Products by US Federal agencies and their employees.

Titled " Notice of Order Regarding Exclusion and Removal of DeepSeek Products from Federal Civilian Executive Branch Information Technology Systems and Procurements ," the order bans the inclusion of DeepSeek AI technology in federal civilian agency purchases and requires removal of DeepSeek products from use, as well as removal of any IT products using DeepSeek technology.

As noted in the order, DeepSeek technology is not only sold directly but is used in many mobile applications readily available in mobile app stores. DeepSeek technology, available as an SDK and other integrations, is available at no cost to application developers. Because of its low cost, DeepSeek technology is widely used by mobile app developers worldwide. Consequently, DeepSeek is a classic case of Shadow AI use in third-party mobile applications.

To comply with this order, all federal agencies must identify and remove apps using DeepSeek immediately, creating an urgent compliance and AI Governance challenge.

Manually determining which mobile applications are using third-party solutions like DeepSeek is a time-consuming, laborious task that can be accomplished quickly and definitively by Zimperium's Mobile App Vetting (MAV) solution.

With Mobile App Vetting , Zimperium actively scans every version of a mobile app to inform the enterprise admin what SDKs and other integrations the apps use. MAV also tracks what countries apps communicate with and what device permissions apps request (accessing contacts, camera, microphone, etc.). Policy can then be applied to identify non-compliant apps, and the security team can remove these apps from their device fleet to maintain compliance.

Mobile App Vetting is a standard feature of Zimperium Mobile Threat Defense (MTD). Federal agencies affected by this order who are already Zimperium customers can leverage MAV immediately to identify potential uses of DeepSeek within their mobile fleet. Our customer success team is happy to assist in configuration and support.

For those agencies that are not currently Zimperium MTD customers, please reach out immediately to see a demonstration of the world's leading AI-Empowered Mobile Threat Defense Platform, including how to quickly identify unauthorized and non-compliant use of AI on employee devices, as well as other potential threats targeting the mobile attack surface.

For more information, contact: [email protected]