A Feb. 20, 2008 Efluxmedia.com article notes “...China's Huawei Technologies Co., is known for its strong ties to the Chinese government.”

Then there is the AP Feb. 20, 2008 article citing “Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., noted "Given rising concerns about the threat posed by the Chinese regime's cyber-espionage, it would have been a grave error for U.S. regulators to approve a deal…by one of the least transparent companies operating in China, a firm with long-standing ties to Chinese army and intelligence services."

On the CISCO conflict:

A Jan. 28, 2003 San Francisco Chronicle article notes “Cisco Systems' lawsuit against overseas rival Huawei Technologies last week will do more than shape future competition between the two giants…Mark Chandler, general counsel at the San Jose firm, said …..Cisco has never previously filed an intellectual property suit and did so now only after finding similarities between Huawei and Cisco products that couldn't be coincidence, Chandler said…."This is a pretty unique case -- a company that has gone out and copied our intellectual property from soup to nuts," Chandler said. "Copying is not competition. Misappropriating intellectual property is not innovation." …Founded in 1988, Huawei has become an object of intense speculation within the Internet equipment industry…..many analysts have speculated that Huawei is backed by the Chinese government…..Because Huawei is not publicly traded, however, information about the company's backers and customers has been scarce….Cisco's lawsuit concerns alleged duplication of some of Cisco's programming and manuals. In some cases, Cisco's and Huawei's user interface screens were identical, Chandler said. File names with long histories inside Cisco were duplicated, he said, as were fragments of old Cisco coding that programmers, working on their own, would never replicate…"We had some customers asking us when we'd granted a license to Huawei because the materials were the same," Chandler said. "So we were kind of scratching our heads." 

So what really then does Huawei want?

First what Huawei DOES NOT want:  

3Com (either controlling ownership interest or minority investment interest) or its revenues, market share and/or its business future.

What Huawei DOES want:

Direct “Access” (not ownership or minority "investment" interest) to a key subsidiary and its technology/R&D – Tipping Point. Specifically, as this Analyst opines - its R&D lab/facilities/paperwork. Call it seeking a ticket to a “2 day R&D lab (free pass) intelligence spree” - Access to next generation intrusion prevention system technology.

A quick review then of the dominating, world class “intrusion prevention technology” Huawei (Chinese government) wants. And if world class on current generation technology, then really it can be extrapolated that it seeks Tipping Point’s R&D as respects its next (and future) generation intrusion prevention intellectual property.

The following is from the 3Com website and gives a quick overview of the extremely sensitive security technology and how unique it is, and why Huawei is so interested.

“At its most basic level, an intrusion prevention system (IPS) is an inline device that blocks an attack before it can reach its target. Unlike an intrusion detection system (IDS), an intrusion prevention system acts proactively……Deployed anywhere it is needed in the network, intrusion prevention technology plays a growing role in network security, providing a layer of protection unavailable with other appliances. An IDS detects malicious traffic, but is not very successful at preventing attacks and can generate significant numbers of false positives. Similarly, firewalls were not designed to prevent malicious traffic..As trends grow toward network convergence, blended threats, and application-level attacks, IPS technology can prevent problems without sacrificing network performance.  

Performance: What are the system’s throughput, reliability, and latency characteristics? How well does it protect against attacks, and avoid false positives?  

The independent security testing laboratory, The NSS Group (The world's foremost independent security testing facility), rated the Tipping Point IPS latency and user response times as “exceptional”….The NSS Group rated the Tipping Point solution “impeccable, with 100 percent of attacks being detected and blocked under all conditions”. Its accuracy applies to legitimate traffic too—NSS rated it out-of-the-box as 100% resistant to false positives. Comprehensive content-based and rate-based security includes protection against unknown vulnerabilities and DoS, DDoS, and flooding attacks.

The NSS Group gave it “the highest out-of-the-box score in all our signature recognition, false negative, and false positive tests.”

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