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| Western governments are deeply suspicious of involving Huawei in their 5G plans (AFP Photo/Adrian DENNIS) |
Experts
called on 5G providers Friday to heed supply chain security in light of
concerns about technology providers such as China's Huawei, recently banned by
the US government.
"The
overall risk of influence on a supplier by a third country should be taken into
account, notably in relation to its model of governance, the absence of
cooperation agreements on security," said a statement published by a 5G
security conference in Prague.
"Security
and risk assessments of vendors and network technologies should take into
account rule of law, security environment, vendor malfeasance, and compliance
with open, interoperable, secure standards and industry best practices,"
it added.
Called
"the Prague Proposals," the non-binding statement also singled out
the supplier country's adherence to "multilateral, international or
bilateral agreements on cybersecurity, the fight against cybercrime, or data
protection" as a security criterion.
Responding
to the conclusions of the conference, Huawei said in a Friday statement that it
was "committed to working with regulators, operators and industry
organisations to develop effective rules which can build a stronger, more
resilient and safer network."
"As
the EU continues its deliberations, we firmly believe that any future security
principles should be based on verifiable facts and technical data," Huawei
said in the statement forwarded by email.
The United
States has banned government agencies from buying equipment from Huawei over
fears Beijing could spy on communications and gain access to critical
infrastructure if the firm is allowed to develop foreign 5G networks offering
instantaneous mobile data transfer.
Washington
is adamantly opposed to Huawei's involvement because of its obligation under
Chinese law to help Beijing gather intelligence or provide other security
services.
Europe in
turn has been torn over its approach to the Chinese giant -- while countries
such as Britain and Germany have accepted its part in the construction of their
networks, other countries including the Czech Republic have warned against
Huawei.
In
December, the Czech Republic's National Cyber and Information Security Agency
said Huawei's software and hardware posed a threat to state security.
However,
the EU member's pro-Russian, pro-Chinese president Milos Zeman met a Huawei
official in Beijing last week to express his solidarity with the telecoms
giant, saying he lacked "material evidence" for the warning.
Ciaran
Martin, head of Britain's National Cyber Security Centre, on Friday chaired a
working group dealing with security and resilience at the Prague conference
organised by the Czech government.
"We
discussed a set of issues dealing with the problems arising from the vendors we
have now rather than vendors we might like to have in the future," Martin
said.
"There
are a range of security challenges which we noted, sometimes they are issues of
quality -- poor engineering, poor security practices, there are issues and security
requirements arising from the need of the vendors to access the operator's
network."
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