Colm Murphy

Colm Murphy is a Cyber Security Advisor working from Huawei’s Cyber Security Transparency Center in Brussels. Prior to joining Huawei, Colm was the International Director of BSI Group’s cyber security and Information Resilience professional services business, responsible for this business unit's growth beyond the UK and Ireland. Before that he worked with Deloitte and McAfee.

Colm Murphy started his professional career in a small company in Dublin, Ireland. After graduating from college, Colm was interested in learning more about business: sales and marketing, human resources, and international relations. After a while, Colm moved to cyber security, which back then, was mainly focused on network security, data security, etc.

On a business level. Colm Murphy’s career started just as the digital transformation began to take off, amid the dot-com bubble and the commercial Internet. He has always been interested in computing and IT and specialized in cyber security solutions, working initially setting up firewalls and helping to implement this type of security solutions. His journey took him throughout Asia-Pacific, auditing large companies in security screening, penetration testing, and ethical hacking. Some of the companies Colm has been involved with are Network Associates (now known as McAfee) and Deloitte.

In 2002, Colm Murphy joined old colleagues from Ireland in their new company and he took the role of cyber security technical specialist. The company grew and expanded abroad. Eventually, BSI acquired this business which became the heart of the enterprise’s cyber security business. In 2019, Huawei approached Colm and he joined its global office for cyber security and privacy.
 

Colm Murphy is a cybersecurity specialist with extensive experience. His vision can be found in a recent interview conducted by Dinis Guarda. In that interview, he said the following about cyber security, 5G. Cyber Security:

“There are so many tools, standards, procedures, and technologies that need to work together to truly build a functional cyber security system. It is difficult to pinpoint a specific thing that makes for truly secured cyber security. What we need is to approach it holistically. 
One success story of best practices is probably the GDPR. Prior to that, there were 28 different privacy laws, one for each country in the EU. After that, it standardized what was allowed to do and whatnot while putting the user at the center of it all.

In today’s world, being hacked has more to do with how to handle, respond, contain and learn from that threat. In terms of coping, it’s a shared responsibility, especially regarding security in networks. Huawei, as a multinational tech company, plays a part in that shared responsibility. Then, there are other operators that manage these networks and are experts in doing so, and then you have service providers, the consumers, the government, the policymakers, and all stakeholders. One good example of this shared process could be financial institutions. They built a sophisticated learning and threat-sharing mechanism which had all players involved.”

About 5G; “First of all, 5G is an evolution of 4G working on standards and protocols first implemented in 4G. In fact, 5G is much more secure than 4G; it has better protocols and better encryption. The 5G network architecture is much more like a traditional IT network. It uses a lot of software to function properly and better. We are talking about a wireless network that is a step ahead of what we have now, it is an evolution and there are many eyes and people working behind it from different operators to ensure that all protocols, standards, and best practices are in place.

Experts have been securing such networks for over 20 years. Operators are very sophisticated and good at securing their networks. They are very well prepared to secure their networks. It is secure and highly configurable. There are conversations out there about 5G, some of which spread fear and alarm against 5G, but I can say that the industry and all the key players in the supply chain are well prepared to implement and keep this new wireless network safe.”

Huawei And Cyber Security; “At Huawei, we are truly concerned about cyber security. We do a lot of internal research and work before releasing our services/products to the public. And before that, we send our products and tools to specialized third-party companies for further testing. There is a complete and step-by-step process and testing before launching a new product or service. Our doors are open if someone wants to see our code, our protocols, and our technology. From now on, we feel the pressure to be better and I think it’s good for us and our customers because it means we can provide a more polished product and service.”