SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 04/24/12 -- The Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group has expanded its leadership structure to promote work in each of its target areas, intensifying its efforts to drive the industry toward more cooperative efforts to combat online vulnerabilities. The office of the M3AAWG chairman will be shared this year by three co-chairmen, each with specific expertise, and the organization will concentrate on messaging, malware and mobile at its 25th general meeting in Berlin this June.

Michael O'Reirdan with Comcast, who has served as M3AAWG chairman since 2008, will continue as the organization's co-chairman focusing on malware. Alex Bobotek with AT&T is the new M3AAWG co-chairman for mobile and Chris Roosenraad of Time Warner Cable serves as co-chairman for messaging. Bobotek and Roosenraad had served as co-vice chairmen for the past three years and have also held positions as committee chairs.

Michael Adkins and Anthony Purcell, both Board members and former committee chairs, will serve as co-vice chairmen. Jerry Upton continues as the M3AAWG executive director. Known originally as MAAWG, the organization changed its name to M3AAWG, shortened to M3, in February to more directly address the correlation between bots, spam and abuse on both land networks and the growing mobile platform.

Its upcoming multi-track Berlin meeting June 5-7 will emphasize M3-- messaging, malware and mobile -- with keynote Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at F-Secure and one of the leading authorities in online security, among other speakers. The meeting sessions will include mobile security expert Karsten Nohl of Security Research Labs on mobile hacking, a look at global bot remediation efforts, and discussion of a new bot metrics program being developed in M3AAWG for the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, along with ongoing committee work. The meeting will be preceded by training sessions on June 4 covering the new DMARC standard for reducing deceptive emails and a tutorial on the care and feeding of spamtraps, according to Upton.

M3AAWG has reached its 25th general meeting in less than eight years since its founding and now attracts about 400 leading computer security and public policy experts to its events. With its global outreach and cooperative programs over the years, M3 has worked with the London Action Plan (LAP), the European Union's OECD and the GSMA Security Group, along with various other groups, on approaches to mitigate online threats.

Beyond the best practices and exploratory work underway in its committees, M3AAWG is also helping to develop vital industry initiatives in FCC CSRIC (Communications, Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council) working groups and participating in a new anti-bot initiative at the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development).

New Leadership to Support Committee Initiatives

The new M3AAWG chairman triumvirate will cooperatively oversee the organization and support the committees, where most of the organization's work is accomplished. The committees are a forum where diverse segments of the industry can develop approaches to sharing information, identifying emerging problems and stopping online abuse.

Committee chairs appointed for the year are:

• Program Committee chairs Dennis Dayman of Eloqua, Roosenraad and Jamie Tomasello with Comcast
• Technical Committee chairs Bobotek, Murray Kucherawy of Cloudmark, and Gunter Ollmann of Damballa
• Collaboration Committee chairs Christine Borgia of Return Path, Angela Knox of Cloudmark, and Heather Lord of Comcast
• Public Policy Committee chairs Frank Ackermann of eco, Chris Boyer of AT&T, and Rudy Brioche of Comcast.
• Training Committee chairs Kurt Andersen of HP and Sam Masiello with Return Path
• Senders SIG chairs Andrew Barrett of iContact and Tara Natanson of Constant Contact
• Wireless SIG chairs Bobotek, Jamie de Guerre of Cloudmark, and Cathal Mcdaid of Adaptive Mobile
• Open Roundtables chair Jordan Rosenwald of Comcast

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

The Messaging, Mobile and Malware 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) -- or M3 for Messaging, Malware and Mobile -- 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 an open forum driven by market needs and supported by major network operators and messaging providers.

M3AAWG Board of Directors: AT&T (NYSE: T); Cloudmark, Inc.; Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA); Constant Contact (NASDAQ: CTCT); Cox Communications; Damballa, Inc.; Eloqua; Facebook; La Caixa; Message Bus; Orange France Telecom (NYSE and Euronext: FTE); PayPal; Return Path; Time Warner Cable; Verizon Communications; and Yahoo! Inc.

M3AAWG Full Members: 1&1 Internet AG; Adaptive Mobile Security LTD; Adobe Systems Inc.; AOL; BAE Systems Detica; Cisco Systems, Inc.; Dynamic Network Services Inc.; Email Sender and Provider Coalition; Experian CheetahMail; Genius.com; iContact; Internet Initiative Japan (IIJ NASDAQ: IIJI); MailUp; McAfee Inc.; Message Systems; Mimecast; MXTools; Proofpoint (everyone.net); Scality; Spamhaus; Sprint; Symantec; and Trend Micro, Inc.

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

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