Anti-Phishing Working Group announces support for email authentication strategy to the Federal Trade Commission.

MENLO PARK, Calif. and CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Global working group aims to squelch email spoofing and fraud

The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) today announced its support for a global email authentication strategy that would stage the roll-out of technologies for Internet-protocol (IP) validation and digital signatures for message authentication to thwart and finally eliminate spam and phishing attacks.

APWG was one of some 34 signatory companies and industry groups to the plan which was delivered today to the Federal Trade Commission by Microsoft Corporation and TRUSTe, the electronic consumer privacy foundation, in conjunction with the FTC's 2-day email authentication summit in Washington DC on Nov 9-10.

"Email authentication to eliminate spoofing is critical for reducing the threat of phishing fraud" said David Jevans, Chairman of the Anti-Phishing Working Group, "Broad based industry support for a variety of anti-spoofing standards will help accelerate the fight against phishing, as well as provide a foundation for other efforts aimed at reducing spam."

The APWG conferences have featured presentations about competing e-mail authentication frameworks for the education of the APWG membership and to encourage industrial adoption by building informed communities of interest around proposals. The coalition signatories' strategy of step-wise deployment of IP-based and open-ended exploration of digital signature technologies is consonant with this approach.

The Anti-Phishing Working Group

The APWG is the global counter-phishing flag ship organizing the community of stakeholders confronting the phishing threat, including national law enforcement agencies, global banks and financial institutions, national ISPs, ISVs and hardware vendors and e-commerce companies. The group has 900 members worldwide from some 560 companies, government regulatory agencies and law enforcement bureaus, as well as some 60 sponsors from all its members' domains, though only around half allow the APWG to publicize their support: ActivCard (ACTI), Affinity, Anakam, Cloudmark, Cyveillance, Datanautics, Entrust (ENTU), Experian, GeoTrust, GoDaddy, MarkMonitor, McAfee (MFE), MessageLevel, Microsoft (MSFT), NameProtect, NetIQ (NTIQ), PassMark, SAIC, RSA Security (RSAS), Symantec (SYMC), Trend Micro (TMIC), Tumbleweed Communications (TMWD), Vasco (VDSI), VeriSign (VRSN), Visa, Visa Canada, WebSense (WBSN), WholeSecurity, 0Spam.net.

Links to the coalition's letter can be found on the Truste Web site at: http://www.truste.org/about/sender_id_industry_letter.php