Announced last September, Huawei’s Cyber Security Transparency Center was inaugurated today in Rome. Remotely intervened John Suffolk, Huawei Global Cyber Security and Privacy Officer, Luigi De Vecchis, President for Italy of the Chinese company and representatives of the institutions, as well as representatives of telecommunications operators, regulatory authorities and the academic world.
Trust
Announced a few months ago, it involves an estimated investment of between 1 and 1.5 million euros per year. In addition to those already operational at Banbury in the United Kingdom, Bonn, Dubai, Toronto, Dongguan and Brussels, it will allow government agencies, technicians, associations and standardization bodies to perform security audits and test Huawei products for infrastructure. It is spread over two areas: one dedicated to cooperation and innovation, and one dedicated to demos, with the possibility of carrying out tests and verifications.
The center is part of the Chinese company’s strategy to recover the trust of institutions and operators and other potential interlocutors. And thus to counter those who hypothesize a collusion with the Chinese government or the presence of secret accesses such as to allow Beijing to spy on, or worse still, to control the data passing on cellular networks. We are obviously talking about 5G, but also about the whole ecosystem that revolves around the new standard.
Open but not open
Huawei claims to be the only company in the world to open its entire patent portfolio through source code. “It doesn’t mean it’s open source,” says Suffolk. “Different customers want different things. One country might have an interest in evaluating the source code to see if there is something suspicious, another would entrust it to an external body, and yet another would need certification. Italy has a choice: if it wants to access the source codes to evaluate them and run your tests, fine. If you want to use government personnel, fine. If you need a third party, fine. And of course this also applies to operators. In Rome we will meet those interested and together we will look for the right solution. The software is very complex, there are millions of lines of code and it takes great skill to understand what to do with it. You may have been a government official for years, but do you know how to value a chip? No. Do you know how to write code, how to evaluate it? No, and it’s not a criticism. We have one hundred thousand engineers across a range of specializations, all contributing their specific expertise. And that is why when we meet a potential customer we always ask what they are looking for in our code, because different specializations, tools or approaches may be needed depending on the request “.
Investments
The facility is part of Huawei’s global cybersecurity investment, which the Shenzhen-based company says are the highest in the industry: 5% of the company’s global revenue, with an average of $ 750 million invested annually. In addition, of Huawei’s 190,000+ employees, 2% of engineers specialize in cyber security, compared with 1% of the industry average.
“The security of sensitive data and resilience to violation of networks is an integral part of Huawei’s commitments. The dedicated economic resources (double the market average, or 2% of turnover equal to € 750 million), are the more evident testimony “, declared Luigi De Vecchis, CEO of the company in Italy.” The digitization of the economy and the technologies that favor it such as AI, wide use of IoT, Cloud, Virtual Reality and last but not least Edge Computing , on the one hand represent a great opportunity for economic growth and on the other expose the country’s sensitive infrastructures to high risk. In these situations, we cannot talk about safety without a healthy approach based on scientific rigor, providing evidence and evidence concrete, and not on unfounded speculations. “For De Vecchis,” the problem must be tackled jointly, operators, vendors and institutions; facts such as the GSMA’s commitment with 3GPP and Nesas cannot be overlooked on network security and on the tests carried out on telecommunications technology suppliers “. And with the Roman Cyber Security Transparency Center, Huawei aims to “provide a constructive environment in which to demonstrate our openness, spirit of collaboration and transparency, helping to build a digital and safe Italy together with our customers and partners”.