OTA joins the ISOC

The Online Trust Alliance (OTA) announced today they were joining forces with the Internet Society (ISOC). Starting in May, they will operate as an initiative under the ISOC umbrella.
“The Internet Society and OTA share the belief that trust is the key issue in defining the future value of the Internet,” said Internet Society President and CEO, Kathryn Brown. “Now is the right time for these two organizations to come together to help build user trust in the Internet. At a time when cyber-attacks and identity theft are on the rise, this partnership will help improve security and data privacy for users,” added Brown.

News in the email space
Doing email right

Related Posts

Google accounts breached

Over 1 million Google accounts breached by Android malware.
There are some folks I know who really can’t understand why I stick with Apple over Android. The above issue is a big one. Doing what we do, security is a major consideration. I don’t need my accounts, or other accounts I have access to, compromised. It’s not that Apple is 100% compromise proof, but there are more checks and balances in the pipeline.
On the deliverability front, I had a recent interaction with someone from iCloud. This is a colleague I’ve worked with for years now, following him through multiple job changes. A client was having some delivery issues with a shared IP, so I was asking if he could send me some data to help track down the problem customer. I have a habit of asking for subject lines when I’m trying to get data. It’s usually enough for an ESP to track down the problem, and they’re not a way for folks to track down spamtraps or recipients. The answer I got back was sorry, they couldn’t give me any information at all, even something minor like a subject line.
Apple takes user privacy seriously and are doing a lot to protect their users. Does that mean I spend too much money on hardware I could buy cheaper? Perhaps. But, I’ll pay a little more to work with a company that puts privacy at the center of their product suite.

Read More

Happy New Year!

Well, we mostly survived 2016. A year ago I was making predictions about how 2016 would be the year of email security. I was thinking of things like TLS and authentication and access to the inbox. It wasn’t out of the question, Gmail said they’d be turning on p=reject sometime mid-year. They also were suggesting that they would be putting more value on messages that aligned, even in the absence of a DMARC signature. The first still hasn’t happened, and the second doesn’t appear to be in place, either.
DataSecurity_Illustration
That doesn’t mean email security wasn’t a hot topic in 2016. In fact, the use of a private email server was a major topic during the US elections. We also had spear-phishing play a major role in the compromise of campaign systems. I didn’t talk much about that here when it happened, but news reports make it clear that Chairman Podesta and others were targeted for compromise. The NY Times has a more in depth article with broader context around the attacks and how emails were used to infiltrate a major political party.
The irony is with all the time spent talking about how insecure the private server was, that server wasn’t compromised. Instead, the compromise was at Gmail.
We all need to pay attention to our email and how we use it. It also means when we’re sending bulk and marketing email we need to consider the private and personal information we’re putting in messages. Do you send PII? Is there a way you don’t have to? What can we do to protect our brand and our users?
It’s not just bulk email we need to think about, either. Personal email can contain PII, or personal information. A common saying among some of my security friends is “never put in email anything you wouldn’t want to see on the front page of the Washington Post or NY Times.” That’s an easy thing to say, but the convenience of email makes it easy to share information that we may not want on the front page of either paper. Many of us aren’t actually targets of malicious activity so we don’t have to worry about being targeted the way elected and other officials are. But that doesn’t mean we are not at risk. It just means we’re at less risk than others.
Email is a frequent vector for malicious actors to access computers. Most, if not all of the major breeches in the last few years have started with a phishing attack of some sort. The attacks are planned out and sophisticated. This is not going to get better. The phishers are smart and plan the attacks.  We also need to be more personally aware of security given the current political climate. We need to take steps to protect ourselves more than we have in the past.
Security is more important than ever and we all need to protect ourselves.

Read More

Policy is hard

We’re back at work after a trip to M3AAWG. This conference was a little different for me than previous ones. I spent a lot of time just talking with people – about email, about abuse, about the industry, about the ecosystem. Sometimes when you’re in a position like mine, you get focused way too much on the trees.

Of course, it’s the focusing on the trees that makes me good for my clients. I follow what’s going on closely, so they don’t have to. I pay attention so I can distill things into useable chunks for them to implement. Sometimes, though, I need to remember to look around and appreciate the forest. That’s what I got to do last week. I got to talk with so many great people. I got to hear what they think about email. The different perspectives are invaluable. They serve to deepen my understanding of delivery, email and where the industry is going.

One of the things that really came into focus for me is how critical protecting messaging infrastructure is. I haven’t spoken very much here about the election and the consequences and the changes and challenges we’re facing. That doesn’t mean I’m not worried about them or I don’t have some significant reservations about the new administration. It just means I don’t know how to articulate it or even if there is a solution.
The conference gave me hope. Because there are people at a lot of places who are in a place to protect users and protect privacy and protect individuals. Many of those folks were at the conference. The collaboration is still there. The concern for how we can stop or minimize bad behavior and what the implications are. Some of the most difficult conversations around policy involve the question who will this affect. In big systems, simple policies that seem like a no-brainer… aren’t. We’re seeing the effects of this with some of the realities the new administration and the Republican leaders of congress are realizing. Health care is hard, and complex. Banning an entire religion may not be a great idea. Governing is not like running a business.
Talking with smart people, especially with smart people who disagree with me, is one of the things that lets me see the forest. And I am so grateful for the time I spend with them.

Read More