Huawei opens largest cybersecurity transparency center

Huawei Technologies Co opened its largest global cybersecurity and privacy protection transparency center in Dongguan, Guangdong province on Wednesday, as the Chinese tech heavyweight works to engage with customers, suppliers, standards organizations and other stakeholders to jointly strengthen cybersecurity across the telecoms industry.

Hu Houkun, Huawei's rotating chairman, said "Cybersecurity is more important than ever."

"As an industry, we need to work together, share best practices and build our collective capabilities in governance, standards, technology and verification. 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. Together, we can strike the right balance between security and development in an increasingly digital world," Hu said.

Over the past few years, industry digitalization and new technologies like 5G and AI have made cyberspace more complex than ever, compounded by the fact people have been spending a greater portion of their lives online throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. These trends have led to a rise in new cybersecurity risks.

Huawei said it opened the center in Dongguan to address these issues, providing a platform for industry stakeholders to share expertise in cyber governance and work on technical solutions together.

The center is designed to demonstrate solutions and share experience, facilitate communication and joint innovation, and support security testing and verification. It will be open to regulators, independent third-party testing organizations and standards organizations, as well as Huawei customers, partners and suppliers.

Mats Granryd, director general of GSMA, a global telecom industry body, said at the opening of Huawei's new center, "The delivery of existing and new services in the 5G era will rely heavily on the connectivity provided by mobile networks and will fundamentally depend on the underlying technology being secure and trusted."

"Initiatives such as the GSMA 5G Cybersecurity Knowledge Base, designed to help stakeholders understand and mitigate network risks, and NESAS, an industry-wide security assurance framework, are designed to facilitate improvements in network equipment security levels across the sector," he added.

At the event, Huawei also released its Product Cybersecurity Baseline, the culmination of over a decade of experience in product security management, incorporating a broad range of external regulations, technical standards and regulatory requirements.

Huawei said the baseline, together with Huawei's other governance mechanisms, helps ensure the quality, security and trustworthiness of the company's products. Over the years, Huawei has built over 1,500 networks that connect more than three billion people across 170 countries and regions, the company said, adding none of these networks have ever experienced a major security incident.