Security concerns should not be a dark cloud

Calvin Huang, Head of Solution Architecture, Huawei Cloud South Africa.

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For many organisations, security is the dark side of digital transformation. It’s the what-if question that lingers after every innovation: what if our data is breached? What if we lose everything? What if something goes wrong? Yet the reality is that the cloud, when well architected, can be the most secure place for business to thrive.

Security is often misunderstood as a single product or setting, a wall that keeps threats out. But security, like the cloud itself, is dynamic. It has to adapt, respond and anticipate. Huawei Cloud’s security framework is built on what it calls ‘systematic construction and constant operations’, a philosophy that blends intelligent automation, real-time monitoring and compliance by design.

“Security is not something you attach to the cloud, it is how the cloud works,” says Calvin Huang, Head of Solution Architecture at Huawei Cloud South Africa. “Every layer, from infrastructure to application, has to think and respond for itself.” This approach means that Huawei Cloud customers benefit from more than 20 proprietary security services and over 400 ecosystem solutions that work together to secure applications, networks and workloads.

At the heart of it all is SecMaster, Huawei Cloud’s unified security operations centre. Powered by AI and informed by three decades of cyber security expertise, SecMaster automates over 99% of incident responses and provides end-to-end visibility of security posture across environments. BYD, a global electric vehicle and energy solution company with a growing presence in Africa, uses Huawei Cloud’s SecMaster to automate detection and response across its manufacturing systems, cutting security handling time by more than 80%. 

Modern threats do not work nine to five, and neither does Huawei Cloud’s security system. Built on a seven-layer defence model, it continuously scans, analyses and adapts. Intelligent analytics flag anomalies early while automated playbooks handle routine responses with precision. “Customers do not want another alert, they want assurance,” says Huang. “They expect the cloud to spot and solve problems before they even see them.” Huawei Cloud also adheres to more than 120 global compliance certifications, including ISO/IEC 27001, SOC 2 Type II, CSA STAR and South Africa’s POPIA, giving customers confidence that their data is managed according to the highest international standards. Privacy and compliance are embedded, not outsourced. From network firewalls and intrusion prevention to data encryption and key management, every control works in concert. The goal is not only protection but predictability. When businesses know their cloud environment is continuously secured, they can move faster and scale without hesitation. A great example is NetEase, whose online platforms run entirely on Huawei Cloud. With security and compliance handled at platform level, its teams can focus on development rather than defence.

Behind every confident business is a solid plan B. Backup and disaster recovery may not grab headlines, but they are what keep companies standing when disruption strikes. Huawei Cloud’s backup and disaster recovery solutions are built on multi-region redundancy and automated replication. Data is encrypted and synchronised across availability zones so that services can recover within minutes. For industries like finance and manufacturing, this level of continuity is critical. “When systems go down, it is not just data you lose, it is confidence,” says Huang. “Backup and disaster recovery are what turn a potential crisis into a non-event.” Through cloud-native tools, Huawei Cloud allows organisations to automate backup policies, perform one-click recovery and simulate disaster recovery drills without disrupting operations. The system’s intelligence continuously verifies backup integrity and ensures that recovery time objectives and recovery point objectives are met or exceeded. This proactive design has already paid off for customers globally. China Express Airlines, for example, adopted Huawei Cloud’s hybrid disaster recovery architecture to strengthen resilience across its flight and booking systems. This keeps core systems running and customers unaffected, no matter the conditions.

Every business leader knows that risk cannot be eliminated entirely, but it can be managed intelligently. That is the mindset Huawei Cloud brings to its customers, moving from fear to preparedness, from reaction to anticipation. “The goal isn’t to prevent failure, it’s to recover fast enough that no one notices,” adds Huang. By embedding best practice across its security framework, Huawei Cloud turns resilience into readiness. In the end, security concerns should not be a dark cloud hanging over transformation. They should be the reason you move faster, not slower. Because when security works as quietly and constantly as this, confidence becomes your default setting.