How Huawei is Modernising South Africa’s Industries Securely
The City of Ekurhuleni (COE), located in South Africa’s Gauteng Province, is situated to the east of Johannesburg and southeast of the country’s administrative capital Pretoria and is widely recognised as one of the country's most urbanised and industrially developed core economic zones.
As South Africa's third-largest metropolitan area, COE is home to some of South Africa’s top-tier educational and healthcare resources, a highly skilled workforce and a robust manufacturing and service sector, earning it the reputation of being "the engine room of South Africa's economy".
As the nation’s smart city initiatives begin gathering speed, COE is looking to accelerate its digital transformation with stable, efficient and secure network infrastructure emerging as a key pillar of this transformation.
Time for a change
Establishing reliable, state-of-the-art energy systems is going to be one of the key enablers of COE’s modernisation. In recent years, digital infrastructure has started to be embedded across energy systems around the world. Energy companies, whose traditional operations are typified by manual inspections and labour-intensive workflows, are gradually introducing machine-based inspections and digitalised processes. This transformation relies heavily on a stable and reliable network infrastructure to ensure seamless connectivity across campuses.
Due to its aging network infrastructure, COE has made limited progress in the intelligent transformation of its electric power campuses. Through analysis and field research, it has been possible to identify how poor signal quality, difficulties in operations and maintenance (O&M) and inadequate security protection are negatively impacting the region’s legacy infrastructure.
Analysis has shown that COE’s original network equipment on electric power campuses is outdated, with many devices still operating on Wi-Fi 5 standards. The resulting weak signal strength and limited coverage significantly impacted staff productivity and overall network experience.
The region’s legacy wireless campus network, built years ago, lacks a unified management platform for its devices. With a large number of wireless network devices in operation, device-by-device manual fault troubleshooting has proven time-consuming and significantly increased operational costs.
Data security was also a critical concern. Statistics show that government systems account for 9.5% of all cyberattacks, ranking among the top three most targeted sectors alongside finance and commerce. Municipal electric power data is classified as sensitive government information, making it an attractive target for hackers.
Due to outdated and insufficiently secured network infrastructure, senior officials in COE's electric power department remain deeply concerned about potential data breaches. Any data leak could lead to substantial financial losses, impact hundreds of thousands of residents, and trigger widespread public complaints. Moreover, the city's complex workforce mobility further exacerbates data protection risks, underscoring the urgent need for proactive cybersecurity measures.
Faced with these three major challenges, COE's electric power department has partnered with Huawei to launch a sweeping set of network upgrades, powered by Huawei's Xinghe Intelligent High-Quality 10 Gbps Campus Network Solution.
How lightning-fast wi-fi can boost office efficiency
Improving wireless office efficiency was a key priority for COE. To achieve this, it has opted to adopt Huawei’s Wi-Fi 7 technology for high-speed wireless access and ubiquitous network coverage. This, it hopes, will lay a solid foundation for future business growth.
COE's electric power campus network has also deployed Huawei's 10GE-capable multi-gigabit switches along with Wi-Fi 7 access points (APs), dramatically boosting transmission speeds across the campus network. As a result, production data transfers and file downloads are now several times faster, while key applications such as video conferencing run smoothly without lag, significantly improving user experience. Crucially, Wi-Fi 7 has extended wireless coverage throughout the COE campus, providing staff with seamless, dead-zone-free connectivity anytime, anywhere.
Wi-Fi Shield Secures Electric Power Campus Network
Wi-Fi has become the primary method for Internet access on computers and mobile devices, offering both convenience and reliability for office connectivity. Traditionally, Wi-Fi transmission security relies on symmetric and asymmetric cryptographic encryption at the MAC layer, such as the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithms used in WPA2 and WPA3 protocols.
However, because wireless signals propagate through the air, they are vulnerable to eavesdropping. Hackers can eavesdrop and store users’ data, which, under normal circumstances, would require a great deal of time to decrypt. However, in the era of explosive computing power (driven by AI), hackers can store and crack eavesdropped packet data quickly using large-scale computing platforms. As a result, traditional cryptographic systems may be compromised in the blink of an eye. This poses one of the most critical security risks of wireless communication when compared to wired networks.
But how can packet eavesdropping be prevented? Huawei has pioneered an innovative solution that addresses the issue at the physical layer of wireless signal transmission and reception. This breakthrough forms a central part of Huawei's unique Wi-Fi Shield technology. By leveraging the firm’s Wi-Fi Shield, clients can massively improve the security performance of wireless networks, effectively mitigating the risk of information leakage during transmission.
So, how does Wi-Fi Shield technology work? The AP precisely detects the physical location of the target user. When transmitting packet data, it simultaneously emits a randomised noise signal. This noise is algorithmically designed to cancel out (dropping to zero) at the target user's location, which allows only the target user to demodulate the packet data correctly.
Outside of the target location, however, the noise signal persists, causing non-target receivers to receive a distorted signal mixed with noise. As a result, they are unable to extract valid packet data. This mechanism effectively eliminates wireless packet eavesdropping at its source.
While ensuring ultra-fast connectivity, Wi-Fi Shield technology effectively addresses the inherent security vulnerabilities of traditional Wi-Fi networks. It is particularly well-suited for scenarios with high demands for data security and confidentiality, such as government agencies, financial institutions, and technology R&D environments.
This technology has addressed the urgent need for secure data transmission across COE's electric power campuses. In line with specific application requirements, COE's electric power department has established Wi-Fi Shield protection zones at outdoor toll stations and office areas within the campus, effectively preventing data eavesdropping and unauthorised data storage.
As digital and intelligent technologies penetrate deeper into core areas such as daily office work, production, and operations, data security and management integrity have become increasingly critical. Relying solely on message-level encryption is proving inadequate to prevent data leaks. Adding an extra "security lock" to the data transmission channel is a necessary consideration for critical sectors like government, finance and scientific research.
Efficiency, visibility and smart management: Huawei’s digital map
Optimising O&M was another key priority for COE. To that end, COE deployed Huawei's campus network digital map, a platform that enables centralised device management, network visualisation, and unified O&M, enhancing management efficiency while significantly reducing operational costs. By integrating management, control, analytics, and AI into a single intelligent and automated network management system, the campus network digital map enables full lifecycle automation and AI-powered fault detection and resolution driven by big data.
With this deployment, COE's electric power department has transitioned from traditional manual troubleshooting to intelligent O&M featuring automated fault detection, inspection, and localisation. Network issues can now be pinpointed within minutes and resolved with a single click – dramatically lowering O&M costs and boosting operational efficiency by more than 90%. The construction of COE's high-quality 10 Gbps electric power campus network has set a benchmark for advanced infrastructure in government network rollouts. This achievement is expected to spark a wave of innovation in campus network development across the region.
Building on this success, COE will continue to strengthen its partnership with Huawei to build a robust Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem and roll out more smart applications across key domains, including intelligent transportation, smart healthcare and digital education. By implementing a unified communications-based command and control system, COE is driving greater operational efficiency and accelerating its vision of "good governance, public benefit and industrial prosperity." With these transformative advancements, COE is poised to become a trailblazer in South Africa's smart city journey.
