“Security or Nothing” - Huawei Cyber Security Transparency Centre Opens in Brussels

“Trust in cyber security is one of the major challenges that we face as a global community. 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 for building trust in the digital era.”

These were the opening remarks from Ken Hu, Huawei’s Deputy Chairman, at the opening of Huawei Cyber Security Transparency Center in Brussels on March 5, 2019. More than 200 representatives from regulatory bodies, telecom carriers, enterprises, and the media were present at the event. As a member of Huawei International Key Opinion Leader (KOL) Program I was invited to attend the Grand Opening with other fellow KOLs.

Huawei’s approach to cyber security is “Security or Nothing”. The company has maintained a strong track record in security for three decades. Huawei has placed cyber security and user privacy protection on the very top of their agenda. At Huawei, they have the ABC principle for security: “Assume nothing. Believe nobody. Check everything.”

Cyber security challenges

Cyber security is a challenge we all share in an increasingly digital world. Trust is the foundation for a healthy digital environment. However, as technology evolves, it’s becoming more difficult to build that trust. In his opening remarks, Ken Hu identified four main challenges to building trust.

1. Fast developing digital technology has brought many new security challenges. Networks have much greater attack surfaces than ever before.
2. As a global community, we lack a common and unified understanding of cyber security. As a result, different stakeholders have different expectations, and there is no alignment of responsibilities.
3. The industry lacks a unified set of technical standards for security, as well as systems for verification. Digital products include components from many different countries, with many different standards, or no standards at all.
4. In some countries, cyber security management lacks legislative support, and cyber security enforcement is not mature.

Safeguarding cyber security is considered to be a responsibility held by all industry players and society as a whole. Growing security risks are significant threats to future digital society. 

Call on collaboration

Huawei believes that mutual understanding is the starting point. In order to build a trustworthy environment, regulators, standards organizations, telcos, and technology providers need to work together. To address these challenges, Huawei has opened a Cyber Security Transparency Centre in Brussels, aiming to offer government agencies, technical experts, industry associations, and standards organizations a platform, where they can communicate and collaborate to balance out security and development in the digital era. Huawei Cyber Security Transparency Centre will:

1. Showcase Huawei's end-to-end cyber security practices, from strategies and supply chain to R&D and products and solutions. This will allow visitors to experience cyber security with Huawei's products and solutions, in areas including 5G, IoT, and cloud.
2. 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.
3. Provide a product security testing and verification platform and related services to Huawei customers.

The opening of the Cyber Security Transparency Centre in Brussels demonstrates Huawei's stronger cyber security commitment to governments, customers, and other partners in Europe, and will provide better support to facilitate collaboration.

Key messages of the day

Huawei Cyber Security Transparency Centre is open to customers and independent third-party testing organizations. They are invited to perform fair, objective, and independent security tests and verifications according to industry-recognized cyber security standards and best practices. The Centre is equipped with dedicated testing environments, to provide customers and third parties with Huawei products, software, technical documents, testing tools, and necessary technical support.

Fellow Key Opinion Leader, Mike Flache, was “very impressed by the transparency that Huawei offers. The company invites all regulators, the government and enterprises to have a real experience in the new center. That’s the right sign.”

My friend and also a KOL, Elise Quevedo, particularly liked the presence of Alex Sinclair, CTO of GSMA and Troels Oerting, Head of Centre for Cybersecurity at World Economic Forum. “Through these open partnerships, it is clear Huawei is here to make a bold statement and call out on those who doubt their operations and solutions.”

In Huawei’s 30-year history, no evidence has ever shown its gear to be less secure than equipment made by Ericsson, Nokia, or Samsung. No Chinese laws compel the installation of backdoors or other spyware. Huawei’s founder, Ren Zhengfei, recently told a roomful of reports that the company has never received a request from Chinese government (or any other) for “improper information” about anyone. Even if it did, it would definitely say “no” to such a request. And if it was forced to do it, it would prefer to close the company, then to share secrets about its customers and their communication networks. This message was reiterated by Huawei’s officials at the Huawei Cyber Security Transparency Centre grand opening in Brussels.

I attended the opening of Huawei Cyber Security Transparency Centre Opens in Brussels as a member of Huawei International Key Opinion Leader (KOL) Program. Huawei covered my travel and accommodation expenses. The views and opinions expressed here are my own and based on my personal experience, and do not express the views or opinions of Huawei. I have not been compensated in any way for this article or my opinions.