Huawei is aiming to continue combating security concerns raised about its products in Europe by relying on the best way it knows how – money.
After already pledging significant sums to the United Kingdom and proposing commitments to Poland amid a still-ongoing spying scandal, the Shenzen-based telecom giant announced the opening of yet another one of its security labs, this time in the very heart of the political bloc ruling the Old Continent. The facility in question is officially called the Cyber Security Transparency Centre and is located in Brussels, with Huawei envisioning it as the brain of many of its European operations focused on keeping its customers safe and protected from digital threats, both on the World Wide Web and beyond.
The facility will welcome third-party researchers interested in witnessing many rigorous tests Huawei-made gear is subjected to or even conduct them themselves, the tech giant confirmed. The third purpose of the institute is to serve as a safe harbor for fostering important discussions on cybersecurity. It’s highly dubious whether a significant number of top IT security specialists from Europe is on board with the idea and while Huawei‘s decision to face security concerns surrounding its products head-on, its attempt to somehow lead the rest of the industry toward new R&D breakthroughs along the way is likely too optimistic.
Regardless, the firm remains adamant the discussions it’s pushing for need to happen and independent experts ought to verify its solutions are as safe as it originally claimed. Huawei is far from paranoid for spending tens of millions of euros on such an endeavor given how the United States government has been openly and aggressively lobbying against its international expansion for over a year now.
Those efforts already yielded some success; Australia changed its wireless rulebook last summer in order to prevent Huawei from controbuting to its 5G project, Canada, South Korea, and Japan are currently close to doing the same, Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic were previously reported to have explored similar options, and the U.S. itself only outlawed the tech juggernaut’s telecom gear from federal use so far but it’s extremely unlikely any single company in the country would risk drawing the combined wrath of Washington and Capitol Hill by partnering with Huawei in the foreseeable future.
The company also continues to face scrutiny over repeated allegations of spying and a general lack of respect toward the international intellectual property law, which led to the aforementioned scandal in Poland earlier in the year and also saw the Department of Justice file for litigation against the firm several weeks back as part of a rare direct move against one of China’s largest companies.
And while Huawei is now said to be considering a lawsuit of its own, the point it’s trying to argue is a moot one, numerous western intelligence agencies already signalled; it’s not about whether the company lost the trust of its foreign clients in the past but that there’s nothing guarding it against China’s pressure in the future, assuming it’s not essentially state-owned in the first place, which is what some older criticism also suggested, albeit without evidence.