John Suffolk, Huawei's senior vice-president and global cyber security officer, called for the establishment of international industry standards for cyber security.

"It is with an eye to the future that we recognize and embrace the need for international industry standards for cyber security," the paper quoted Suffolk as saying.

"The problem with standards today is that they are not standard, " Suffolk added.

The paper also devotes significant details to Huawei's way of managing third parties and supply chain and procurement practices, as well as describing its processes related to audit, traceability and defect and vulnerability identification and resolution.

The white paper launch followed a roundtable lunch held with Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) on Sept 25 this year, to discuss the European Commission's proposed Network and Information Security Directive.

Francis, a keynote speaker at the EP event, told MEPs: "No one can stop cyber threats; what the world needs to do is collaborate. The bad guys will always by default be one step ahead of us."

"So, therefore, we need to collaborate to make sure we are trying to catch up as fast as we can," he said.

"Huawei's philosophy has been to build security into the core of everything it does, from the supply chain to architecture and people," he added.