Latin American and Caribbean Anti-Abuse Working Group to Collaborate with LACNIC and M3AAWG to Fight Online Threats

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - May 4, 2017) - The Latin American and Caribbean Network Operators Group (LACNOG) has chartered a new working group to serve as a regional voice in the global anti-abuse community. The new LAC Anti-Abuse Working Group (LAC-AAWG) will convene experts from regional network operator communities and the global Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group to encourage industry dialogue, develop recommendations and advance best practices for safeguarding online activities.

LAC-AAWG will hold its first face-to-face meeting at LACNIC 27 in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil, May 22-26, where it is partnering with M³AAWG to organize trusted, open-discussion sessions on anti-abuse issues and best practices. These sessions are being coordinated by LAC-AAWG founding chairs Lucimara Desiderá, security analyst at CERT.br (Brazilian National Computer Emergency Response Team) which is maintained by the Brazilian Network Information Center (NIC.br), and Christian O'Flaherty, ISOC senior development manager for Latin America and the Caribbean.

"LAC-AAWG was created to be a place where regional network operators and anti-abuse experts can share their concerns about current and emerging online threats, discuss processes validated by their peers to reduce abuse, and develop best practices that address both local and global issues. The concept is that local involvement is essential to consider our specificities and global engagement is necessary to stay abreast of the latest threats traversing the internet and to help develop operations that will mitigate them," Desiderá said.

Since its founding in 2004, M³AAWG has emphasized the importance of global cooperation within the online community in fighting spam, phishing, fraud and other cybercrime and has worked to provide a trusted venue where security and policy experts can share information. Participants from 26 countries attended the four-day M³AAWG 39^th General Meeting in San Francisco in February and its annual European meeting will be June 12-15 in Lisbon, Portugal. 

Last year, M³AAWG began to explore means to improve collaboration with the LAC operator communities. As a result, LACNIC (the LAC Network Information Center) and M³AAWG formed a partnership to share expertise and information that could reduce regional and global abuse. The development of LAC-AAWG as an independent working group within LACNOG is one outcome of those efforts. The partnership also has paved the way for M³AAWG members to provide training on hosting anti-abuse operations and to work with the regional community on anti-abuse best practices. 

M³AAWG Chairman Severin Walker said, "Because cyber criminals ignore borders and only care about scamming the targeted victims, the reality is that we all face similar threats and malware. There is no question that online security and abuse are both local and international issues. We applaud LACNOG, and appreciate the efforts of LACNIC, in creating this new forum as a model of local participation and global engagement. It is a resourceful approach that could be effectively applied in other regions."

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) 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.

M³AAWG Board of Directors: AT&T; CenturyLink; Cloudmark, Inc.; Comcast; dotmailer; Endurance International Group; Facebook; Google; LinkedIn; Mailchimp; Microsoft Corp.; Orange; Rackspace; Return Path; SendGrid, Inc.; Vade Secure; and Yahoo Inc.

M³AAWG Full Members: 1&1 Internet AG; Adobe Systems Inc.; Agora, Inc.; AOL; Campaign Monitor Pty.; Cisco Systems, Inc.; CloudFlare; Dyn; Exact Target, Inc.; IBM; iContact; Intel Security; Internet Initiative Japan; Liberty Global; Listrak; Litmus; Mimecast; Nominum, Inc.; Oracle Marketing Cloud; OVH; PayPal; Proofpoint; Spamhaus; Sparkpost; Sprint; Symantec; and USAA.

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