Amid claims that Chinese 5G network equipment supplier Huawei is offering products with backdoors for conducting espionage, Japanese IT Giant NEC and Cisco have decided to offer network equipment under a partnership deal where the supplied equipment will be cyber threat proof by 100% all down the supply chain.
Cisco aims to achieve its objective by integrating its fraud detection technologies with NEC’s blockchain technologies meant to secure network devices.
An official statement released by NEC says that the equipment will be ready and released into the market by mid-2020 and the entire risk management in the supply chain will be done by an expert’s team which will keep an eye on the product production right from the design, to development and will carry forward its surveillance entirely through the transportation and maintenance stage.
As a part of this initiative, Cisco has agreed to permit NEC authorities to verify the existing authenticity of the already produced equipment by integrating NEC’s Lightweight Tamper Detection and blockchain technology with Cisco’s Proprietary Trustworthy Technology.
As all the data will be historically recorded through blockchain technology, network admins can check the authenticity of the devices during production, shipment inspection, and network installation stage.
In the near future, NEC plans to extend its cyber threat detection technology throughout the entire life cycle including expansion, upgrade, maintenance and operation.
Note- Cisco has been approached by the Japanese telecom sector for a local 5G project which has to be done in an authentic way sans controversy.
