Home News Canadian Privacy Commissioner Keynotes Joint M3AAWG-LAP Meeting; Summit Shapes Global Dialogue on Protecting Online Citizens

San Francisco Oct. 4, 2013 Featuring a keynote by the Canadian privacy commissioner, the Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group (M3AAWG) is hosting the London Action Plan (LAP), an international cybersecurity enforcement network, at a collaborative industry summit Oct. 21-24 in Montreal.  M3AAWG is also launching new work at the meeting on compromised hosting accounts, mobile threats, identity management and other areas of escalating concern.

The summit continues the momentum within the two organizations on confronting current and emerging online threats. It brings together LAP’s law enforcement, government, public policy officials and industry partners with the technical and subject matter experts in M3AAWG in a vetted, trusted environment.

“Collaboration between law enforcers and industry is essential for a coordinated approach to spam and other cyber threats directed to consumers,” said Betsy Broder, LAP meeting chair and counsel for international consumer protection at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. “The longstanding partnership between LAP and M3AAWG has led to more vigorous enforcement against cyber threats, a key goal of LAP members.”

Among the more than 40 sessions at the meeting, the new M3AAWG Hosting Special Interest Group has organized extensive panels on compromised accounts with representatives from the National Cyber-Forensics & Training Alliance, HostExploit.com, M3AAWG members and invited companies outlining the latest threats. The SIG also has organized a closed-door session with a diverse group of hosting industry specialists to begin work on developing industry best practices. 

The Canadian Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart will address privacy in the online environment, and there will be a session on the growing problem of VoIP abuse.  The newly formed M3AAWG Academic Committee also has organized presentations on a new botnet takedown analysis and recommendation system by a Georgia Tech researcher, and an insider’s look at the futuristic mobile research that is taking place at Stony Brook University.

Current and emerging mobile issues will also be a focus of the meeting.  Experts will share their knowledge of the latest mobile threats, feedback loop proposals, and spam case studies and defenses. Other topics to be addressed include malware identification and remediation, payment system abuse, assisting emerging online countries with messaging security, data breach responses, identity management and social network abuse. Training courses will explore LAP abuse handling tools for law enforcement, with M3AAWG courses teaching techniques for using data collection and manipulation to better understand anti-abuse intelligence. 

“This collaborative meeting is aimed at developing and sharing solutions to protect end-users worldwide,” said Alex Bobotek, M3AAWG Co-Chairman.  “Last year, we worked with LAP to jointly develop the Best Practices to Address Online and Mobile Threats document, which outlines proven industry methodologies from the global community.  This meeting will expand our organizations’ collaboration on these crucial issues.”

The London Action Plan is led by a three-member secretariat from the Office of Fair Trading in the United Kingdom, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Industry Canada.  Formed in 2004, it is a global network of government agencies, enforcement agencies and industry representatives in the spam enforcement, data protection, telecommunications and consumer protection fields.  LAP promotes international cybercrime enforcement cooperation and addresses spam-related problems and cyber threats, such as digital security, online fraud and deception, phishing and the dissemination of viruses.

This is the 29th M3AAWG General Meeting and the 9th Annual LAP meeting.  More information is available at www.m3aawg.org and http://londonactionplan.org/.

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); Cloudmark, Inc.; Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA); Constant Contact (NASDAQ: CTCT); Cox Communications; Damballa, Inc.; Facebook; France Telecom (NYSE and Euronext: FTE); Google; Oracle/Eloqua; PayPal; Return Path; Symantec; Time Warner Cable; Verizon Communications; and Yahoo! Inc.

M3AAWG Full Members: 1&1 Internet AG; Adobe Systems Inc.; AOL; BAE Systems Detica; CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL); Cisco Systems, Inc.; CloudFlare; Dynamic Network Services Inc.; Email Sender and Provider Coalition; Experian Marketing Services; Genius; iContact; Internet Initiative Japan (IIJ, NASDAQ: IIJI); LinkedIn; Mailchimp; McAfee Inc.; Mimecast; Nominum, Inc.; Proofpoint; Scality; Spamhaus; Sprint; and Twitter.

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

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