LONDON – It will take 3 to 5 years for Huawei to deal with security issues raised by the UK’s National Cyber Security Council (NCSC). Reuters saw a letter to British lawmakers from the Chinese firm in which it responded to the NCSC report that found it had exposed the UK’s telecom networks to security risks. The NCSC commented that it was in “regular dialogue with Huawei about the standards expected of their products.”
In a letter to lawmakers last week, Ryan Ding, president of the company’s carrier business group, said it would take up to five years to see results. “Enhancing our software engineering capabilities is like replacing components on a high-speed train in motion,” he said in a letter to the chairman of the British parliament’s science and technology committee.“It is a complicated and involved process, and will take at least three to five years to see tangible results. We hope the UK government can understand this.”
Check It Out: Huawei Needs 3-5 Years to Address UK Security Concerns
Secondly, just like cities banning Uber until Uber gives them their user tracking data for free… should probably see this as UK’s bargaining stance – give us the user data (like western companies do!!), and we’ll let you back into the networks.
Firstly, the Huawei has the jump on western companies in 5G and are positioned to supply the bulk of 5G infrastructure. Unsubstantiated espionage accusations are a way of tilting the playing field for lazy Western companies. Not to mention gold for the US trade war with China.
A lot of the press about the risk of using Huawei network devices has focused on security. The worry they might spy on communication. Frankly I feel that’s been badly overplayed. The risk is far different.
Suppose China one day wanted to move militarily in some way. They ask Huiwei to push out a patch, like they do for firmware and software regularly. The patch slides out, nobody notices, all is fine. And then on some predetermined date in the future, days, weeks, even months later, all of the Huiwei routers in this area, or running in that country suddenly fail. Cell networks collapse, most of the web, and all of the up to date parts, go down. Maybe it’s permanent. Maybe they only go down for a day and then a patch sent by Huiwei miraculously fixes them and the network comes back up. Everyone looks around. All is normal. Except that China, like a base runner who took second while the lights were out, is now permanently established and in control of …Taiwan…Okinawa and related islands…Guam…wherever. Being able to turn off your adversaries communication at a critical moment, it’s a general’s dream. Is Huawei the only one at risk of this? No, but the message is that lawmakers should mandate at least three vendors from three different countries for this mission critical infrastructure. Single source is a single point of failure.