To help strengthen Asian efforts to protect the internet and online users an independent regional offshoot of the global Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group  has been founded to focus on cybersecurity issues related to Japan’s unique challenges- JPAAWG.

“JPAAWG was formed as a place where local industry professionals can collaborate and share information to better protect our internet users. Our goal is to disseminate the proven industry best practices developed by M3AAWG and explore how these apply to Japan then bring back to M3AAWG information on the specific abuse in our region. We also are encouraging other Asian countries to participate in the global anti-abuse community through our regional organization,” said the JPAAWG ChairmanShuji Sakuraba, who is also the application service department general manager at the Internet Initiative Japan (IIJ).

IIJ has been an active member of M3AAWG since it was founded in 2004. They have taken the lead and collaborated with TwoFive and several other local businesses to develop JPAAWG.

M3AAWG Chairman of the Board Severin Walker said, “Regional organizations like JPAAWG are important because online threats tend to flow from country to country, so there is both a global and local aspect to protecting end-users. In M3AAWG, we bring together professionals from around the world to share what has worked for them in fighting cybercrime and online abuse, then we distill this information into best practices and other anti-abuse work. The local professionals in the regional organizations decide how best to apply these processes to their ecosystem and also raise new issues to be addressed by the M3AAWG community.”

In addition to contributing to M3AAWG’s general meetings this year, JP-AAWG will hold its 3rd annual session in Tokyo later in 2020. More information can be found at https://www.jpaawg.org.