Andy Purdy, Chief Security Officer, Huawei Technologies US.
The ICT giant Huawei is looking for alternative sources of supply to mitigate the impact of sanctions imposed by the US. The company is optimistic that it can do robust business even without US suppliers.
“We have been pursuing alternative supplies. A part of our 5G products are now made with no US components. We shipped 40,000 5G base stations with no US components,” said Chief Security Officer, Huawei Technologies US, Andy Purdy, while speaking to The Peninsula recently at the pavilion of Huawei at Qatar IT Conference and Exhibition (QITCOM 2019).
He said that the sanctions have affected both parties as the company was selling and buying the products from US suppliers. “About 130 US companies want to sell Huawei products which shows the double-sided impact of sanctions,” said Purdy.
He said that the company is optimistic to do business globally without American suppliers. “We prefer to buy from American suppliers. We spend about an average of $11bn on American suppliers which translated into creating about 40,000 jobs in a year,” he added.
He said that the sanctions might impact on growth in revenue of Huawei. Although the dent on revenue growth due to sanctions is likely to be less than previous expectation.
“Despite challenges posed by the sanctions, it seems that company is still doing very well and the potential figure of a $30bn reduction in revenue growth might fall to $10bn, or may even be less than that,” said Purdy.
Speaking about the achievements of Huawei in the cyber security field, Purdy said: “We have opened independent Cyber security labs to test the vulnerability of the products and fix problems and to build a new technology to provide greater assurance.”
For example he said that in 5G, the company provides a third party solution which enables to monitor security gateways, security mechanism and tools to make sure the risk is managed to win the trust of customers.
He said that the company has mechanisms in place to provide assurance and transparency. “According to the Cyber security experts, it is important to have an objective and transparent basis for trust and we are promoting global uniform standard and best practices to confirmation programmes and independent testings for a trust and verification mechanism,” said Purdy.
He said that such kinds of measures are being taken to avoid the influence of any government. “Given specifications of nations states and vulnerability, we recommend this kind of approach for all telecom operators and all equipment vendors because the bad guys can hack through the equipment,” said Purdy.
He said that with global supply chains, major companies with connections to China and other parts of the world, require measures in place to provide assurance and transparency to win the trust of governments.
“In the overall approach from the last seven to eight years, we have created a global assurance programme for Cyber security privacy, working closely with the customers, suppliers, the European Union, & governments around the world to understand what are the exact requirements,” said Purdy.
Andy Purdy is the Chief Security Officer for Huawei Technologies USA (since July 2012). Andy oversees Huawei USA’s cyber security assurance strategy and system, and supports Huawei’s global security assurance program. Andy is the Huawei global lead for the East-West Institute Global Cooperation in Cyberspace Initiative and serves on the Steering Committee of the Open Group Trusted Technology Forum, which developed the Open Group Trusted Technology Provider Standard (O-TTPS), recognised by ISO as 20243.
