China’s New Rules for Selling Tech to Banks Have US Companies Spooked

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.wired.com/2015/01/chinas-new-rules-selling-tech-banks-us-companies-spooked/

By Davey Alba
Wired.com
01.29.15

Technology companies that want to sell equipment to Chinese banks will 
have to submit to extensive audits, turn over source code, and build “back 
doors” into their hardware and software, according to a copy of the rules 
obtained by foreign companies already doing billions of dollar worth of 
business in the country. The new rules were laid out in a 22-page document 
from Beijing, and are presumably being put in place so that the Chinese 
government can peek into computer banking systems.

Details about the new regulations, which were reported in The New York 
Times today, are a cause for concern, particularly to Western technology 
companies. In 2015, the China tech market is expected to account for 43 
percent of tech-sector growth worldwide. With these new regulations, 
foreign companies and business groups worry that authorities may be trying 
to push them out of the fast-growing market. According to the Times, the 
groups—which include the US Chamber of Commerce—sent a letter Wednesday to 
a top-level Communist Party committee, criticizing the new policies that 
they say essentially amount to protectionism.

The new bank rules and the reaction from Western corporations represent 
the latest development in an ongoing squabble between China and the US 
over cybersecurity and technology. The US government has held China 
responsible for a number of cyberattacks on American companies, and 
continues to be wary that Chinese-made hardware, software and internet 
services may have some built-in features that allow the Chinese government 
to snoop on American consumers. Meanwhile, China has used the recent 
disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden as proof that the US 
is already doing this kind of spying—and that this is reason enough to get 
rid of American technology in the country.

[...]

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