Britain has identified “significant” issues in Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co’s (華為) engineering processes that pose “new risks” for the nation’s telecommunications, a government report said yesterday.
“Further significant technical issues have been identified in Huawei’s engineering processes, leading to new risks in the UK telecommunications networks,” read the annual findings from the government’s Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre oversight board.
Huawei is the leading manufacturer of equipment for next-generation 5G mobile networks that are to provide nearly instantaneous connectivity for smartphones, but some Western nations have barred it amid fears Beijing could gain access to sensitive communications and critical infrastructure.
A Huawei spokesman yesterday told reporters that the company was taking the concerns “very seriously” and that they would be used as part of its “ongoing” process to improve its capabilities.
The oversight board said that it “does not believe that the defects identified are a result of Chinese state interference.”
However, the board added that “no material progress has been made by Huawei in the remediation of the issues reported last year.”
“Overall, the oversight board can only provide limited assurance that all risks to UK national security from Huawei’s involvement in the UK’s critical networks can be sufficiently mitigated long-term,” it said.
The center was formed in 2010 to mitigate perceived risks arising from the involvement of Huawei in critical national infrastructure.
The government-led board includes officials from the Government Communications Headquarters cybersecurity agency, as well as a senior Huawei executives and representatives from the British telecommunications sector.
The report “details some concerns about Huawei’s software engineering capabilities,” the Huawei spokesman said. “We understand these concerns and take them very seriously.”
“The issues identified ... provide vital input for the ongoing transformation of our software engineering capabilities,” he said.
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