Telegraph
"Significant issues" with Huawei equipment could be placing British national security at risk, according to a damning report by UK authorities.
The Huawei oversight board, which is chaired by the head of GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Centre, said there were “underlying defects” in the Chinese firm's practices.
It stopped short of calling for an outright ban on Huawei equipment, but said it will be “difficult to appropriately risk-manage future products in the context of UK deployments".
The development comes amid concerns about the company's involvement in 5G infrastructure because of claims the firm would be obliged to assist in Chinese state intelligence work, something Huawei has repeatedly denied.
It also reflects frustrations among security officials over Huawei's alleged lack of action.
The Chinese telecoms has already pledged to spend an extra $2bn (£1.5bn) to ease security concerns raised by GCHQ.
However, the oversight board warned that no material progress has been made by Huawei to fix any of the security issues raised and said it could only provide "limited assurance" that the risks to UK national security can be sufficiently mitigated in the long term.
Huawei has struck back against the report, claiming that there are no standards for trustworthiness and results in the UK and calling for the the government to work with the industry to produce standards.
David Wang, executive director of Huawei said the company is "starting a self-transformation that is a difficult and painful process which will take place in the next 3-5 years", and that a response to security concerns will take time.
Mr Wang added that there are bound to be vulnerabilities in the network but claimed that there are "no maliciously implanted back doors" in the company's systems.
He also responded to claims in the report that the NCSC has no confidence in its transformation programme, saying that the company has yet to communicate what the programme will do.
"This transformation will have an impact on our 80,000 R&D personnel and will change our culture, processes and systems and staffing," Mr Wang said.
"We already have finalised the high level plan for the transformation programme internally and very soon we will start to communicate this plan to the stakeholders including NCSC and we will be listening to stakeholders recommendations to finalise this plan."
The UK government is understood to be formulating strict new rules due in weeks to block telecoms operators from using the company’s technology in their networks.
Telecoms industry sources said that officials were set to recommend a 50pc cap on the proportion of equipment that can come from Huawei.
A decision on whether Huawei should be banned entirely from the UK's 5G network is expected to be made in the coming weeks.
Washington has been stepping up efforts to lobby allies in Europe to shun the Chinese telecoms equipment maker over concerns about cyberespionage and have pressured the UK and other allies to block it from their networks.
It has also sued Huawei for allegedly stealing trade secrets and is attempting to extradite its chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou from Canada on fraud charges.
In a statement, Huawei said the British report “details some concerns about Huawei’s software engineering capabilities. We understand these concerns and take them very seriously.”
This report comes days after a security update from the European Union, which ignored the US' call for a ban in a series of recommendations on 5G network security.
