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| Ken Hu, a rotating chairman of Huawei, speaks during the opening ceremony of the firm's Global Cyber Security and Privacy Protection Transparency Center in Dongguan, China, Wednesday. Courtesy of Huawei |
By Yi Whan-woo
Huawei has opened a cybersecurity center aimed at proving the quality of its products to customers, business partners and regulators worldwide.
Being the world's largest of its kind, the Global Cyber Security and Privacy Protection Transparency Center in Dongguan, China, also focuses on ensuring the protection of the private information of individuals, firms, governments and other customers.
"The center is designed to demonstrate solutions and share experience, facilitate communication and joint innovation and support security testing and verification," the firm said Thursday, explaining that the center is a part of broader efforts to engage with stakeholders on cybersecurity.
The launch follows a trend of greater reliance on digital technologies amid lockdowns and social distancing measures, and a growing need to beef up cybersecurity.
Huawei has been a leader in 5G, the up-to-date global standard in wireless technology. It has over 1,500 networks connecting more than 3 billion people across 170 countries and regions.
"Cybersecurity is more important than ever," Ken Hu, a rotating chairman of Huawei, said during the opening ceremony at the Dongguan Center, Wednesday. "We need to give both the general public and regulators a reason to trust in the security of the products and services they use on a daily basis."
He urged the industry to work together, share best practices and build collective capabilities in governance, standards, technology and verification, saying that such efforts can help with finding "the right balance between security and development in an increasingly digital world."
"We need to set shared goals, align responsibilities and work together to build a trustworthy digital environment that meets the challenges of today and tomorrow," Hu added.
The ceremony was attended by executives from GSMA, SUSE and the British Standards Institution ― all multinational companies in the mobile and software sectors ― as well as telecom regulators from Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates, among others.
GSMA Director General Mats Granryd said that the successful implementation of 5G will depend heavily on secure and trustworthy mobile networks.
He explained how his firm, through the GSMA 5G Cybersecurity Knowledge Base initiative, is helping stakeholders understand and mitigate network risks.
He mentioned the Network Equipment Security Assurance Scheme (NESAS), jointly defined by GSMA and the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), a France-headquartered international umbrella group of institutions for developing mobile telecommunications protocols.
The scheme is designed to facilitate improvements in network equipment security.
During the ceremony, Huawei introduced "Product Security Baseline," a white paper outlining the firm's security rules for products, in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a set of EU criteria on data protection and privacy in the EU, including the European Economic Area.
Huawei described the whitepaper as the "culmination of over a decade of experience in product security management," noting it incorporates a broad range of external regulations, technical standards and regulatory requirements.
Sean Yang, director of Huawei's Global Cyber Security and Privacy Protection Office, urged stakeholders to join in discussing and working on cybersecurity baselines.
"This is the first time we've shared our security baseline framework with the entire industry, not just core suppliers," he said. "Together, we can continuously improve product security across the industry."
