October 5 addendum - "60 Minutes" to have story on Huawei on October 6
http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/blog/2012/10/huawei-on-60-minutes-sunday-night.html
Interesting August 27 article (and video) by CNET, “Inside Huawei, and the Chinese tech giant that’s rattling nerves in DC”. Huawei is a $32 billion technology company, with 140,000 employees worldwide (including Silicon Valley in California) and the holder of over 50,000 patents. A US congressional committee has been having ongoing discussions with the organization because of their fears that the company may be a national security threat.
According to the article, “Congressmen Mike Rogers (R-Mich.)
and C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.) said they were investigating "the
threat posed to our critical infrastructure and counter-intelligence posture by
companies with potential ties to the Chinese government.” Some of this does come across as posturing in
an election year. In because this in
involved with the area of national
security, the internet, hacking activities,
corporate and government “monitoring” of other nations by governments,
there’s a cause for some concern.
Why Huawei? The House
Intelligence Committee has been vague, according to the article. They said that they “have received claims
with varying degrees of credibility about cyberattacks internationally that may
have been enabled by Huawei technology.”
This may be a bit of a stretch.
Nonetheless, the US government is specific with high tech companies
about technologies that can’t be sold to specific countries,
such as Syria.
In March, the Australian government blocked Huawei from
bidding on any contracts for the country's A$38 billion (roughly US$39 billion)
National Broadband Network.
Symantec had ended a four-year-old
joint venture with Huawei earlier in the year because of fears that the
relationship could prevent it from getting information from the US about
cyberthreats. Neither article discusses whether other US or global antivirus vendors such as Mcafee, Avg Technologies, Kaspersky, Sophos, or Trend Micro, have a relationship with Huawei. Some immediate questions? Are there areas that aren't cyber security sensitive that these companies could partner with Huawei on? What's the tradeoff between immediate business justification, public relations hits and potential long term business? It's that perception versus reality thing.
Slight correction - AVG Technologies could be in a quiet mode with respect to Huawei. From a Thursday morning Google search using Huawei and AVG Technologies:
Slight correction - AVG Technologies could be in a quiet mode with respect to Huawei. From a Thursday morning Google search using Huawei and AVG Technologies:
AVG Partners with Huawei
blogs.avg.com/view-from-the-top/avg-partners-huawei/
1 day ago - AVG security solutions are now provided to
millions of Huawei customers globally, starting in ... And now, through our new
alliance with Huawei, a leading global ...
This is probably AVG Technologies' Mobilation antivirus product for the Android OS. There also seems to be a promotion going on (can't tell exactly where) for home users owning a Huawei smart phone.
In January, the Pentagon transferred an information-sharing
pilot program, called the Joint Cybersecurity Services Pilot, to the Department
of Homeland Security. Originally, the
program was intended to share classified National Security Agency intelligence
with military contractors. The
government was expected to
extend the program beyond those companies to antivirus companies, like
Symantec, and network providers.
According to a March article in the New York Times,
Symantec became “worried that its ties to Huawei would be a disadvantage when
it came to being the recipient of classified threat information”.
In 2011, Huawei released their "Statement on
Establishing a Global Cyber Security Assurance System". Huawei held four meetings in 2011 to decide
on the company’s overall cyber security strategy. Huawei stated that they are “Willing to
work with all governments, customers and partners through various channels to
jointly cope with cyber security threats and challenges from cyber security.”
In the enterprise, Huawei has an extensive portfolio of
products in networking, IT infrastructure, and security. On the consumer side, products include mobile
phones, tablets, broadband, and modems.
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1 comment:
Thanks for finally writing about > %blog_title% < Loved it!
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