http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2012/10/11/pol-huawei-nortel-experience.html

While I am usually a supporter of an open-bidding system for contracts, if the security of my country is at stake, I have to draw the line.

According to allegations from a former security adviser to Nortel (a Canadian telecommunication company), a Chinese company by the name of Huawei was spending years hacking into Nortel’s systems and stealing information. Huawei is the second largest telecommunication equipment company in the world, and is based in China. I believe that the allegations are likely to be true, because of the track record China has in international markets. Chinese companies have shown that they are not afraid to break laws in other countries in order to maximize profit, so I don’t think that they would second guess the opportunity of hacking a rival company to acquire trade secrets.

There are many Canadian contracts related to telecommunications that will be on the market relatively soon; one of them is to build a secure network for the federal government. I believe that Huawei should be excluded from bidding on the contract, as giving our confidential information to a company that has been shown (through evidence) to exploit security flaws would be short-sighted. Even if it saves us money on the contract in the short-term, the loss to national security has the potential to be devastating. The Canadian government should tread carefully when dealing with Huawei, and keep in mind the possible future damages of entrusting our networks to them.

Image Source: http://vdi.itgct.com/network-security/