The Dragon’s Footprint: Chinese Devices in the U.S. Swell by 41% in the Last Year
The U.S. government’s efforts to limit the number of China-made devices through cybersecurity evaluations aren’t resonating well with the rest of the country. In the 12-month trailing February 2024, Chinese devices grew by 41%, with some industries, including critical infrastructure ones, doubling the number of China-made devices in the past year.
- Despite efforts to contain the prevalence of Chinese-manufactured devices, their use continues to grow in the United States.
- In the 12-month trailing February 2024, Chinese devices grew by 41%, with some industries, including critical infrastructure ones, doubling the number of China-made devices in the past year.
- Chinese devices are perceived with serious cybersecurity risks.
The U.S. government’s efforts to limit the number of China-made devices through cybersecurity evaluations of shipping cranes, connected cars, and battery energy storage systems aren’t resonating well with the rest of the country.
According to cyber risk management company Forescout, approximately 300,000 Chinese-manufactured devices from 473 vendors were in U.S. networks in February 2024. This is 41% more than the 185,000 devices that existed a year ago.
The surge also corresponds to an increase in percentage terms, from 2.71% in February 2023 to 3.83% in February 2024.
“The main concern is the possibility that the Chinese government allows them to access and tamper with the devices remotely. Plus, software vulnerabilities discovered in China give them enough time to exploit those on targeted organizations,” Forescout noted.
Forescout’s data is derived from a subset of 7.5 million of a repository of 19 million connected IT, OT, IoT and IoMT devices on the Forescout Device Cloud. While IT devices, which comprise 88% of the ~300,000 Chinese devices, decreased marginally in the trailing 12 months from 90.65%, the number of extended IoT (XIoT) devices from China increased from 6.58% to 9.04%.
Chinese Devices in the U.S.
Source: Forescout
The significant surge in Chinese devices is despite the ban on some of the most popular China-based companies: Huawei, ZTE, Hikvision, Dahua and Hytera. As such, Lenovo tops the list of the top Chinese devices in the U.S., followed by Hikvision (banned in India, Europe, and the U.K.), owing to the popularity of their surveillance equipment.
See More: Chinese National Who Stole Google’s AI Secrets Indicted
Top Chinese Devices in the U.S.
Source: Forescout
Hikvision devices are still the third most popular devices in the U.S. government networks (the FCC banned them in 2022), behind Yealink’s VoIP phones and Honeywell’s security surveillance IP cameras.
Most Popular Chinese Devices in U.S. Government Networks
Source: Forescout
While the government sector regularly deploys China-made devices, it is still lower than the technology sector and is eclipsed by healthcare and manufacturing. The top 10 industries using Chinese-manufactured devices are:
- Healthcare: 82,190 devices
- Manufacturing: 79,664
- Technology: 21,850
- Government: 21, 842
- Services: 13,721
- Financial: 11,514
- Retail: 8,461
- Entertainment: 3,686
- Utilities (Oil & Gas): 2,763
- Education: 1,917
Curiously, the technology sector is the third-biggest user of Chinese devices in the U.S., despite a 12% decline in the number of devices. Similarly, the prevalence of Chinese devices in the U.S. retail and education sectors slid by 30% and 5%, respectively.
Conversely, entertainment saw the highest increase in Chinese devices at 135%, followed by manufacturing (105%), healthcare (47%), financial (40%), and government (30%).
Image source: Shutterstock
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