SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., May 18 – Continuing its widely successful efforts to fight online abuse and enable a safer Internet experience since 2004, the Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group (M3AAWG) today announced plans to focus its work around four key industry topics, including readiness, data and identity protection, communications and supply chain, as it continues the development of the organization.

Download PDF
 

Based on today and tomorrow’s messaging, anti-abuse and cybersecurity environment, these focus areas will drive the efforts of M3AAWG’s committees, special interest groups and partnerships, while supporting the formation and development of new initiatives.

• Readiness: shift to be proactive to identify emerging threats, focus on prevention/mitigation/detection, deprecate older technologies
• Data and identity protection: protect online identity (ex. using multi-factor authentication), ensure data privacy and security through use of encryption/encrypted protocols, adopt zero trust principles that assume requests are breaches, must be verified explicitly and are using least privileges to help mitigate.
• Communications: protect network, messaging, mobile and IoT communications/systems/devices from malware, spam, phishing, DDoS and DNS attacks
• Supply chain: understand downstream dependencies and risk, incorporate secure software development/testing practices and proactively monitor, detect and manage vulnerabilities
• Organization: M3AAWG will continue its efforts to strengthen and build the organization, which is largely comprised of volunteers, via its diversity and inclusion efforts and global outreach and partner organizations

“For almost 20 years, M3AAWG and its members have published dozens of prescriptive best practices implemented by industry, provided significant inputs into industry standards, and offered guidance for public policy related to the Internet, messaging and online abuse,” said Janet Jones, M3AAWG chairperson. “As increasingly sophisticated challenges to the Internet and cybersecurity emerge, we will focus the extensive expertise and experience of our members and technical advisors to collaborate on addressing the most important issues of our times. We can then provide guidance, best practices and perspectives to industry to help prevent and mitigate these issues.” “With their extensive history and deep experience in email, messaging, malware and related topics, M3AAWG members have worked tirelessly to identify and help the industry remediate and prevent the most egregious and prevalent cases of abuse,” noted Rod Rasmussen, principal at R2 Cyber, chairman of ICANN’s Security and Stability Advisory Committee and M3AAWG expert advisor. “We will carry on this work while aligning our efforts around current, emerging, and future abuse and cybersecurity challenges to ensure our members and their stakeholders continue to benefit from these collective efforts.”

M3AAWG members will meet mid-June in London to continue their collaboration efforts, with a focus on regional cybersecurity and online abuse issues. More information and member registration can be found at https://www.m3aawg.org/upcoming-meetings and Twitter (@M3AAWG), LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube. Session updates and more info also will be posted on the blog.

About 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) members represent 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.

Contact:
PR@M3AAWG.org