Huawei opens ‘transparency centre’
March 6, 2019
Huawei has opened a Cyber Security Transparency Centre in Brussels in a ceremony with 200 representatives from regulators, telecom carriers, enterprises and the media in attendance.
Huawei, the world’s biggest telecom equipment maker, is mired in accusations its equipment is being used to spy for the Chinese government. It has denied all charges and argued they are politically motivated, but some European countries as well as the US have banned Huawei’s equipment from their 5G networks.
In January, Poland’s internal affairs minister, Joachim Brudziński, called for the EU and NATO to take a “joint stance” on whether to exclude Chinese equipment vendor Huawei from their markets after a n Huawei employee was arrested in Poland on spying charges.
In Germany and other European markets, there is great concern about the economic implications of delaying 5G’s roll-out by excluding the Chinese company’s equipment as it is the leading 5G supplier and Europe is already perceived to be lagging.
Ken Hu, Huawei’s Deputy Chairman said: “Trust needs to be based on facts, facts must be verifiable, and verification must be based on common standards. We believe that this is an effective model to build trust for the digital era.”
The company says the Centre has three major functions:
- to showcase Huawei’s end-to-end cyber security practices, from strategies and supply chain to R&D and products and solutions. Visitors can explore cyber security with Huawei’s products and solutions including for 5G, IoT and cloud.
- to facilitate communication between Huawei and key stakeholders on cyber security strategies and end-to-end cyber security and privacy protection practices. Huawei will work with industry partners to explore and promote the development of security standards and verification mechanisms, to facilitate technological innovation in cyber security across the industry.
- to provide a product security testing and verification platform and related services to Huawei’s customers.