Huawei Opens Global Cybersecurity Center to Hinder Data Hacking from Smartphones

Chinese communications gaint, Huawei launched a Global Cybersecurity and Privacy Protection Transparency Center in Dongguan, South China on Wednesday which Chinese media said will make it difficult to steal information off its mobile handsets and other devices.

"Huawei's decision to open such a cybersecurity transparency center aims to dispel the security concerns of some Western countries. Of course, for countries that want to and are used to monitoring other countries' intelligence, the Dongguan center may indeed be a concern, as they cannot easily steal intelligence as before," Ma Jihua, an industry analyst who closely follows Huawei, was quoted as saying by  Global Times.

The Dongguan center will be open to regulators, independent third-party testing organizations, standards organizations, and Huawei's customers, partners and suppliers, said John Suffolk, global cybersecurity and privacy officer of Huawei at the opening ceremony.

Chinese state media said that the center can help fend off some malicious slander, especially from the US government that has used security as an excuse to crack down on Huawei following its stupendous success in the U.S. market which was threatening the dominant position of Apple.

The company has set up six cybersecurity and transparency centers over the past decade in Europe, the Middle East, and North America.

These centers are designed to address the issues that have emerged from a cyberspace that is more complex than ever, as industry digitalization and new technologies such as 5G and artificial intelligence (AI) have developed fast speed in recent years, Huawei said.

When asked by media about fears connected to cybersecurity and the US ban on Huawei, Suffolk said that the market reality is that Huawei has limited access to certain components and that it has repositioned in some markets.

In addition, Huawei for the first time, made its product security baseline framework and management practices available to the industry by releasing a Product Cyber Security Baseline on Wednesday.

The event came a week after Huawei officially launched it HarmonyOS for smartphone devices and announced a roadmap of upgrading almost every possible device that goes way back up to 2016.

HarmonyOS was launched in response to the U.S. ban on use of the Android OS on Huawei devices.

According to the official roadmap released by Huawei on June 2, HarmonyOS 2.0 will support devices with up to 128MB RAM, such as smart wearables and other IoT devices. In 2021, It will support devices up to 4GB RAM, such as tablets and entry-level smartphones. By the end of 2021, this RAM limit will increase over 4GB and open a way for the support of flagship smartphones.