John Suffolk, the ex-government CIO who had resigned from his post in November 2010 has been named by Huawei as its Global Cyber Security Officer (GSCO).  John Suffolk will be responsible for executing the task of formulation and implementation of Huawei’s global cyber security assurance strategy and schemes.

This move to the Chinese telecom giant has been planned for this autumn. The newly appointed GSCO’s office will have its base at Huawei’s headquarters in Shenzen, China. Suffolk will assume office on October 1. He will report to Ren Zhengfei, CEO Huawei.

John Suffolk was on the top in silicon.com’s CIO50 list which ranked the most prestigious of IT heads in the year 2010. His name was also there in the list of silicon.com’s Government IT Agenda Setters which came in the same year. John Suffolk has been a very influential personality.

In the year 2006, Suffolk had been appointed as the UK Government CIO. He gave thrust to a multitude of technology transformation projects which were targeted at making the UK government more efficient. One of these technology transformation projects was named the G-Cloud, which planned to reduce £3.2bn from Government’s expenditure by portioning out IT services and public sector software in the cloud. Ever since John Suffolk took leave from the Whitehall, he has been working at the World Bank High Level Experts group as their adviser. Through this he is assisting governments in understanding the manner in which technology can facilitate the public sector. His efforts are also aimed at helping the governments infer how economic growth is generated through technology.

John Suffolk mentioned on his blog that having spent the last five years as CIO and CISO in the UK Government, security became an integral part of his thinking, planning and execution. He also wrote  on his blog that all of us accept that as technology spreads more and more, we become more dependant on it  so there is a need for all of us to come together  globally to talk about the challenges and threats that are posed by the people who think of manipulating the vulnerabilities in technology.

Previously, before assuming the post of UK Government CIO, John Suffolk was director general at the UK Criminal Justice Transformation Programme and also the Managing Director of Britannia Building Society prior to that.