Already working to distance itself from Chinese telecom Huawei, the United Kingdom has ramped up its concerns following the discovery of “critical, user-facing vulnerabilities.” An investigation conducted by the Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre Oversight Board noted that although Huawei addressed existing flaws, it created new ones. The report, quoted in Yahoo Finance, called the ongoing issues “further evidence that deficiencies in Huawei’s engineering processes remain.”
During an earlier review, U.K. authorities had determined that the country could manage the risks and continue to utilize some aspects of Huawei technology. However, the government is cautious about including Huawei in its 5G rollout plans given the worries about security exposures. British officials are further hampered by the “entity list” composed by the United States. Huawei has taken it upon themselves to update some of their own equipment with American components, making it harder for the U.K. to determine the origin of various telecom parts.
Conservative party lawmaker Bob Seely expressed dismay at the findings, saying “This is a poor state of affairs, especially as Huawei kit will remain in U.K. networks and may even be added to it, despite the ban.”
The HCSEC report concluded that the government “can only provide limited technical assurance in the security risk management of Huawei equipment in U.K. networks.” The report added that it did not believe that security issues were part of an undermining effort headed by the Chinese government, but did determine that the equipment problems were severe and of “national significance.”
A spokesman for Huawei said that “Huawei calls for all vendors to be evaluated against an equally robust benchmark, to improve security standards for everyone.”
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