'No decision' has been made on Huawei: British cyber security chief

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'No decision' has been made on Huawei: British cyber security chief

By Latika Bourke

London: Britain's cyber security chief says no decision has been made about whether to allow Huawei to build the country's 5G network.

Declaring the issue "complicated", Ciaran Martin, head of the National Cyber Security Centre, which is part of the UK's intelligence, security and cyber agency known as GCHQ, told the CyberSec conference in Brussels that "everything is on the table".

Britain is facing pressure to follow Australia, the United States and potentially New Zealand in banning Huawei from supplying core 5G network equipment. The government will make a decision after a review concludes in the British spring.

This week, British media reported that intelligence officials had concluded that the risks of allowing Huawei to build the network could be mitigated.

When asked by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age how Britain believed it could mitigate risks that Australia and the US says Huawei poses, Martin stressed no decision had been made.

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"We haven't taken any decisions," he told a briefing of journalists later.

On Wednesday, the defence think tank The Royal United Services Institute warned that Britain would be naive and irresponsible to allow Huawei build their 5G network.

A paper by the think tank said Britain could undermine its role in future Five Eyes intelligence gathering if it did.

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The paper's author, associate fellow Charles Parton, said at a launch event: "Is GCHQ capable of assuring us that it's 100 per cent free [of interference]? If they are then of course there's no argument but if there's any doubt it's a political question not a technology question."

Martin denied the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) was naive and said the UK-US relationship remained strong.

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"The US is our closest operational partner on cyber security and wider national security. We talk openly to them and, of course, we talk privately [and] I can assure everybody that the UK-US cyber security relationship is very, very strong and growing operationally and technically," he said.

Martin said last year the NCSC had flagged concerns with the British government about Huawei but it was related to its cyber security standards - "they are not indicators of hostile activity by China," he said.

He stressed that blocking a state from supplying a 5G kit didn't necessarily prevent hostile attacks.

"The supply chain, and where suppliers are from, is one issue but it is not the only issue. Last year, the NCSC publicly attributed some attacks on UK networks, including telecoms networks, to Russia.

"As far as we know, those networks didn’t have any Russian kit in them, anywhere."

Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou has been charged by US authorities.

Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou has been charged by US authorities.Credit: The Canadian Press

Huawei's chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, has been charged by US authorities with money laundering, bank fraud and stealing trade secrets.

The US has warned allies against using Huawei technology, saying it would make it more difficult for Washington to "partner alongside them".

Australia, New Zealand, and the US have banned or blocked Huawei from supplying equipment for their future 5G mobile broadband networks, while Canada is reviewing its position.

Huawei denies it spies on behalf of the Chinese government but Australia and the US believes it poses a threat.

Martin said the biggest threat to Britain's cyber security was weak cyber security, citing 1200 cyber security incidences since the NCSC's creation within GCHQ in 2016.

"The number one pre-condition for safe 5G is better cyber security," he said.

He urged telecom networks to be "more resilient" and said "no network can be totally safe", adding that networks could be designed to "cauterise the damage" from potential damage.

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"If you’ve built a telecommunications network in a way that the compromise of one supplier can cause catastrophic national harm, then you’ve built it the wrong way," he said.

He added that a third necessary condition for a safe 5G network was ensuring a diversity of telecommunications suppliers.

"Should the supplier market consolidate to such an extent that there are only a tiny number of viable options, that will not make for good cyber security, whether those options are Western, Chinese, or from anywhere else," he said.

"Any company in an excessively dominant market position will not be incentivised to take cyber security seriously."

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