San Francisco, April 22, 2014 – Tackling security concerns with hosting and cloud storage, pervasive monitoring, identity management, and telephony, the Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group has announced the formation of four new collaborative special interest groups along with its organizational leadership for 2014.  The new SIGs provide a trusted venue for industry participation on critical issues while M³AAWG continues to support the ongoing work in its core security tracts.

Protecting end-users has become increasingly complex, requiring broad industry cooperation across multiple disciplines. The new M³AAWG Hosting SIG is also working with the i2Coalition and other industry partners to develop best practices.  The SIG will address issues with cloud storage security, identifying and removing illegitimate accounts, and protecting hosting servers against DDoS and other attacks.  The new M³AAWG Pervasive Monitoring SIG was formed in response to members’ concerns related to recent disclosures about extensive governmental monitoring of the Internet and how the consequent reaction by the technical community may impact, or even reduce, the ability to mitigate online abuse.

Earlier this year, the M³AAWG Voice and Telephony Abuse SIG hosted 90 technical experts, academic researchers, public policy advisors and representatives from government and law enforcement at a two-day workshop addressing robocalls and other voice abuse problems. A second VTA SIG workshop on June 18-19 in Montreal is also open to non-members, and European industry and government representatives will attend a briefing and cooperative data exchange at the M³AAWG 31^st General Meeting in Brussels, Belgium, on June 9-12.

“Sharing timely information about attack vectors, vulnerabilities and proven security methods is crucial to protecting the Internet and providing end-users an accessible and safe online experience.  The collaborative work that will come out of these new SIGs will help fix urgent security issues and will augment the ongoing projects in our other M³AAWG committees to define the latest anti-abuse techniques,” said Chris Roosenraad, who is with Time Warner Cable and serving his third term as M³AAWG chairman.

2014 Leadership Look to Share Best Practices and Training

M³AAWG also announced the other 2014 Board officers serving with M³AAWG Chairman Roosenraad as M³AAWG co-vice chairmen Michael Adkins, Alex Bobotek of AT&T and Jerome Cudelou of Orange.  Sam Silberman of Constant Contact is treasurer and Jerry Upton continues as M³AAWG executive director.

The committees are supported in their work by M³AAWG Senior Technical Advisors, who are recognized industry experts with in depth knowledge in relevant fields.  The current advisors were all reappointed for 2014 and include Richard Clayton, Ph.D.; Dave Crocker; David Dagon, Ph.D.; John Levine, Ph.D.; April Lorenzen; and Joe St Sauver, Ph.D.

M³AAWG committees develop the organization’s best practices and other work that fight abuse and malware.  The 2014 committee chairs are:

• Academic Committee Co-Chairs Manos Antonakakis, Ph.D., Georgia Tech; and M³AAWG advisor Joe St Sauver, Ph.D.
• Awards Committee Co-Chairs Tami Forman, Return Path; and Neil Schwartzman, CAUCE
• Brand SIG Co-Chairs Mike Hammer, AG Interactive; and Franck Martin, LinkedIn
• Collaboration Committee Co-Chairs Christine Borgia, Return Path; Angela Knox, Cloudmark; and Sara Roper, CenturyLink
• Hosting SIG Co-Chairs M³AAWG Chairman Emeritus Michael O’Reirdan, Comcast; and Schwartzman
• Identity Management SIG Co-Chairs O’Reirdan and St Sauver
• M³AAWG Open Round Tables co-chairs Melinda Plemel, Return Path; and Jordan Rosenwald, Comcast
• Pervasive Monitoring SIG with co-chairs O'Reirdan and M³AAWG co-vice chairman Adkins
• Program Committee Co-Chairs Kurt Andersen, LinkedIn; Dennis Dayman, Oracle/Eloqua; and Len Shneyder
• Public Policy Committee Co-Chairs Frank Ackermann; Chris Boyer, AT&T; and Rudy Brioche, Comcast
• Senders Committee Co-Chairs Andrew Barrett, iContact, a Vocus company; and Tara Natanson, Constant Contact
• Technical Committee Co-Chairs Henry Stern, Farsight Security; and Jamie Tomasello, CloudFlare.  For specific work areas, Chris Barton, and Severin Walker, Comcast, are co-chairs for messaging; Paul Ferguson, Internet Identity; and Maxim Weinstein, Sophos, are co-chairs for malware; M³AAWG Co-Chairman Bobotek and Antti Tikkanen, F-Secure, are mobile co-chairs
• Training Committee Co-Chairs Sam Masiello, Groupon; Vincent Schönau, Abusix; and Autum Tyr-Salvia, Marketo
• Voice and Telephony Abuse SIG Co-Chairs Bobotek and Mustaque Ahamad, Ph.D., Georgia Tech

Beyond driving discussions on relevant issues, the committee chairs also help shape the organization’s three meetings each year.  The M³AAWG 31^st General Meeting in Brussels will be a multi-track event with a full day of training.  Industry experts will lead over 30 sessions on mobile security, technical discussions on pervasive monitoring, international public policy and other anti-abuse areas.

About the Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group (M³AAWG)

The Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group (M³AAWG) is where the industry comes together to work against bots, malware, spam, viruses, denial-of-service attacks and other online exploitation. M³AAWG (www.M3AAWG.org) represents more than one billion mailboxes from some of the largest network operators worldwide. It leverages the depth and experience of its global membership to tackle abuse on existing networks and new emerging services through technology, collaboration and public policy. It also works to educate global policy makers on the technical and operational issues related to online abuse and messaging. Headquartered in San Francisco, Calif., M³AAWG is driven by market needs and supported by major network operators and messaging providers.

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Media Contact: Linda Marcus, APR, 1+714-974-6356 (U.S. Pacific), LMarcus@astra.cc, Astra Communications

M³AAWG Board of Directors: AT&T (NYSE: T); CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL); Cloudmark, Inc.; Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA); Constant Contact (NASDAQ: CTCT); Cox Communications; Damballa, Inc.; Facebook; Google; LinkedIn; Mailchimp; Orange (NYSE and Euronext: ORA); PayPal; Return Path; Time Warner Cable; Verizon Communications; and Yahoo! Inc.

M³AAWG Full Members: 1&1 Internet AG; Adobe Systems Inc.; AOL; BAE Systems Detica; Cablevision Systems Inc.; Campaign Monitor Pty.; Cisco Systems, Inc.; CloudFlare; Dynamic Network Services Inc.; iContact; Internet Initiative Japan (IIJ, NASDAQ: IIJI); Litmus; McAfee Inc.; Message Bus; Mimecast; Nominum, Inc.; Oracle/Eloqua; Proofpoint; Scality; Spamhaus; Sprint; Symantec and Twitter.

A complete member list is available at http://www.m3aawg.org/about/roster.