Monday 25 February 2019 12:19 pm | Updated: Monday 03 June 2019 12:15 am

Huawei boss pledges to be ‘more transparent’ on European cyber security

Huawei's top executive in Europe has said the company needs to be "more transparent" in its cyber security practices, hours after Britain's spy agency voiced concerns about its tech.

Vincent Peng told reporters at a trade event in Barcelona that the problems the firm is facing are "a technical challenge, not a political challenge".

"I want to emphasise, since we have done business here for more than 15 years, we try to see ourselves as a European company," said Peng. "That's exactly what we want."

Huawei is under intense scrutiny from regulators, particularly in the UK by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) which publishes an annual report on the company's technology.

Peng said that regardless of the outcome of this year's report that Huawei intends to remain active in Europe, adding: "We are working here not just for another five or ten years, but for another 20 or 30 years."

His comments come just hours after Britain's top spymaster Jeremy Fleming said the UK needs to achieve a greater understanding of the Chinese technological threat.

"We have to understand the opportunities and threats from China's technological offer," said Fleming, speaking in Singapore.

"The strategic challenge of China's place in the era of globalised technology is much bigger than just one telecommunications equipment company."

Huawei is scheduled to open a third European cyber security test centre in Brussels next week, similar to its existing sites in Banbury and Bonn, which seek to alleviate concerns about its equipment.

When asked if he thought Huawei had done anything to earn this level of scrutiny, Peng said: "We tried our best to gain the trust of our customers. If you think we did something wrong, honestly, I don’t think we really did something wrong."

"If you're asking whether we can do more, I think we underestimated the level of this kind of challenge. We don’t know if it's political or a technological challenge, but we underestimated it a bit today."

Peng added that Huawei is working towards the creation of a "unified standard for technical security" for itself, the European Union, governments, telecoms companies and its partners.

Huawei ramped up its $2bn (£1.5bn) plan to address British security concerns last week, the findings of which it intends to present to authorities before the end of June.

NCSC head Ciaran Martin said earlier this month that the UK had not yet seen a “credible” plan to address the problems, but added that a final decision on Huawei's continued participation in British telecoms networks had not been reached.

Peng said today that Huawei could end up spending a lot more than the initial $2bn allocated to the project, which will last for five years.