DURING a presentation at the recently held St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), Huawei Founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei outlined the company's commitment to addressing global issues of information security while emphasizing Huawei's dedication to being open and transparent in its own approach to data security topics. The company-a leading global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider-projects that worldwide network traffic will grow by 75 times over the next 10 years with mobile broadband in particular growing by more than 2,000 times. On a regional level, analysts at research group Informa have already suggested that mobile subscriptions in the Middle East will push past the 250 million threshold sometime in 2012. The Middle East and Africa region as a whole will also lead the world in terms of the percentage of mobile broadband subscriptions through 2012, according to a new report from analyst firm Pyramid Research. Ren believes one of the factors key to the development of the global telecoms industry is not just the creation of networks wide enough to manage huge amounts of data, but matching these with more robust security features. Huawei has been providing security solutions to the global telecom and enterprise market since 2002, and has served more than 100 operators and numerous enterprise customers in more than 40 countries worldwide. Late last year, Huawei even went so far as to buy security solution provider Symantec's 49 percent stake in the two companies' joint venture Huawei Symantec for $530 million-integrating the venture's security and storage technology with Huawei's existing products. "Data by nature tends to be open," Ren noted. "As data flooding increases far faster than prevention technology develops, the whole industry faces information security challenges. Cyber security is a common issue that the whole industry has to face. We must join hands to proactively address this issue." – SG
