Governments that have security concerns about systems manufactured by foreign tech companies, such as technology players like Huawei and Kaspersky for their customers, should ask these vendors to open their source code for inspection, says Eugene Kaspersky.
Instead of letting their paranoia slip, security governments should ask inspection from technology companies to open their systems and source codes. And with 5 G networks enabling larger volumes of data to be transmitted and processed via the cloud, IT providers will increasingly have to provide these options to alleviate business security concerns.
According to Eugene Kaspersky, CEO and Chairman of Kaspersky Lab, 5 G networks would increase connectivity, connect more devices and consumers and send more data into the cloud. Coffee makers and refrigerators connected to the Internet would transmit information about what consumers drink and eat and connected vehicles would provide data on consumer movements throughout the day.
With so much data processed across devices and analyzed in the cloud, he underlined the need for global technology providers to run “transparency centers” to build trust between business customers and customers.
These facilities would allow governments and companies to review the system source codes they were assessing or planning to operate and to evaluate the internal processes of vendors, he said, pointing to Kaspersky’s own efforts in this field.
Last year, the Russian tech company opened its first transparency center in Zurich, moving from Moscow to the Swiss City its core processes. Plans were underway for the opening of another facility in Madrid, followed by a third in Southeast Asia, according to Kaspersky, who said that Singapore and Malaysia were among the markets that she assessed as possible location for the region.
He added that in the first half of this year, a facility would be set up to support the needs of private businesses and noted that the Zurich site mainly addressed government requests.
Kaspersky uses transparency centers to process its customer data as well as to allow companies and governments to review the product source code of the supplier. It also enables researchers to identify bugs and optimize their products, he said.
He also suggested that these centers should be located separately in each country in which customers operated in future.
Any government that is uncertain about technology or product should actually ask the seller to publish its source code for inspection, Kaspersky said, when he asked for advice on how governments should resolve security fears about certain IT systems, such as the apparent anxiety of Huawei’s 5G equipment by the U.S. government.
He added that Huawei provided UK and German governments with their source codes for review.
He also urged companies to increase their cyber immunity so that the cost of a cyber attack would become so expensive for hackers that the efforts to launch an assault in the first place would not be worthwhile.
