Huawei’s Global Cyber Security Officer, John Suffolk, discusses the company’s perspective on 21st century cyber security challenges.
Huawei’s Global Cyber Security Officer, John Suffolk, provides an overview of Huawei’s approach to the cyber security and global supply chain challenge and offers suggestions as to how to address these concerns in a proactive and pragmatic way across the telecommunications industry.
According to Suffolk, the relationship between security and technology is like a marriage. Both parties have to work together to make it a success. Given the reality that cybersecurity knows no bounds, the issue is how we take the very best in the world (the best standards, best practices, etc.) to develop products and services in a secure manner, regardless of the countries involved.
One of the myths in cybersecurity is that all things West are good and all things East are bad. The truth is that no one single product is safer or more secure than any other, as there is technology within that almost certainly comes from a global supply chain.
Talking about the future, Suffolk thinks that the work on cybersecurity will never stop, because the threat never stops. Policies and procedures must be continuously reinvented, improved, and enhanced. However, this is not just about technology, but about people, laws, values, and culture.
Governments must come together to work out what’s to be done collectively to drive up qualities and standards for all technologies from a security perspective. This is not about simply basics, standards, definitions, but about understanding what is meant by cyber security. Technology is helpful to the social wellbeing of mankind. If we overlegislate and overworry about cybersecurity, the usefulness of technology may be limited. Honesty in terms of what the threat vs. what is the investment we have to make to do that would be a great step forward.
