Information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider Huawei (News - Alert) has had a tough time penetrating the U.S. market despite sizeable success in almost every other part of the world. This largely has to do with the fact that the company is held with suspicion by the U.S. government due to the fact that it is Chinese.
Indeed, the state of affairs, particularly cyber affairs, between the two countries has been strained in recent years, but Huawei maintains that it has never used its networking equipment to monitor traffic. That isn’t enough for the U.S., though, and so Huawei has been working hard to prove that it is trustworthy.
Its latest move in this campaign was to announce official support for the launch of the Open Group supply chain standard and accreditation program, which aims to strengthen the global supply chain for ICT products worldwide against cyber attacks. Considering China and Iran are the two biggest sources of cyber attacks against the U.S., this does indeed seem a prudent response.
Huawei also recently entered into a strategic partnership with Microsoft to deliver joint data center solutions that should help its reputation in the U.S., especially since Microsoft (News - Alert) often works with U.S. law enforcement to combat cyber attacks.
According to John Suffolk, Huawei’s global chief security officer, the Open Group program is “a perfect example of the kind of international standard with an accompanying independent accreditation program, which private companies and governments around the world should consider participating in so that we can move more quickly towards a fact-based, risk-informed approach to the global cyber security challenge.”
Organizations that apply to become accredited to the Open Group supply chain standard must provide evidence of conformance to each of the requirements set forth by the Open Group. They must also demonstrate they have processes in place to secure their in-house development and supply chains across the entire commercial on-the-shelf software ICT product lifecycle.