INTERVIEW: Telus will decide on the future of its relationship with Huawei after concluding an assessment on the long-term impact of the Chinese vendor’s US export ban, CSO Carey Frey (pictured) told Mobile World Live.

In an interview at the Mobile 360 Security for 5G event, Frey said the Canadian operator was obtaining information from all of its suppliers “who are potentially affected” by the vendor being placed on a US blacklist.

Frey explained Telus had partnered with Huawei for more than a decade, during which the operator had implemented a number of steps to mitigate any security risks.

“We have worked with the federal government in Canada on an overall cybersecurity programme to protect the Telus wireless infrastructure from cyber attack. Using that programme we have Huawei in our radio access network infrastructure, along with many other vendors that comprise the entire system.”

“Our belief is that we have to deal with all threats and vulnerabilities that put our network at risk, and so we have built a security operation and a cyber defence programme for that infrastructure over the past decade, and as a result, we have not had any security incidents of any significance during that period.”

Frey lauded Canada’s approach to ensuring the security of networks, stating it should serve as a benchmark for other nations.

“In Canada, Telus and the rest of the other carriers in the industry and the government have worked successfully to define a model that we believe is correct going forward and we would like to see more adoption of around the world,” he said.

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