Digital forensic firms beefing up core tech

Xiamen Meiya Pico Information Co Ltd, a listed digital forensics company, is looking to beef up efforts in developing its core technologies among uncertainties in global trade.

The company said in a statement that the current economic uncertainties will not have a big impact on the firm's daily operations since most of its core technologies are self-developed.

According to Meiya Pico, the products they have bought from the US only account for a "minor" percentage of the firm's total purchases.

"The majority of our software products are self-developed while most of our main hardware products are bought from domestic firms," it said.

The comments came after the US Commerce Department placed eight Chinese companies - including Meiya Pico, video surveillance powerhouse Hikvision, facial recognition technology leaders SenseTime Group and Megvii Technology - on a list that bans them from buying components from US companies without special government approval.

Analysts said the remarks demonstrate that the current trade situation has "limited" impact as the group of Chinese companies have been determined in beefing up their core technologies.

"Following restrictions placed on Huawei, a group of Chinese tech companies have been devoted to ensuring a sustainable supply chain and continued innovation efforts," said Xiang Ligang, director-general of telecom industry association the Information Consumption Alliance.

Xiang added that most of them have already had the option of buying products from domestic firms and shifting away from US suppliers.

The Xiamen, Fujian-based company, for instance, noted that they have fully-prepared backup plans and can replace those minor products bought from the US with self-developed ones.

Founded in 1999, Meiya Pico has morphed from a computer sales firm to a digital forensics and information security company with a valuation of more than 15 billion yuan ($2.27 billion).

"Protecting information has become increasingly necessary, among which, crime monitoring and post-crime investigations are of great importance," said Teng Da, chairman of Meiya Pico.

Driven by demand for such services, the company has been focusing on identifying and extracting evidence from digital media such as computer hard drives, mobile phones and media storage cards.

Meiya Pico has also scrambled to cooperate with an array of public security departments to help build safety management platforms on a larger scale, reflecting its broader effort with local government in developing big data industry.

It is also banking on advanced technologies including big data, artificial intelligence or AI and cloud computing to seek new growth engines. Earlier, it established an AI lab to apply the technology to digital forensics and information security.