SPAM workshop at ITU World Telecom 2006

On the last day of the ITU World Telecom conference held in Hong Kong, on the 8th December, the ITU Strategic Planning Unit group organised a SPAM workshop. It was a whole day session and had the key players of the StopSpamAlliance members involved. MAAWG Board members were also present at this meeting.

Although audience numbers were small given it was held at the last day of TELECOM, it gave many of the players involved an opportunity to network and take their efforts one step further. Thanks to the generous support of Outblaze.com, a dinner was held the night before the session allowing for players to network and discuss their efforts further.

I was moderating a panel discussion on regional and international cooperation, and had most of the players of StopSpam Alliance involved and other key players. Check out www.getit.org for substantive views on this session.

The speakers in this session presented their initiatives and reviewed experiences gained.
Session Chairs
* Mrs Laina Raveendran Greene, Lead Consultant, GetIT, Inc, Singapore
Participant(s)
* Mr Bruce Matthews, Manager, Anti-Spam Team / Converging Services Branch, ACMA - Australian Communications and Media Authority, Australia
* Mr Robert Shaw, Deputy Head, Strategy and Policy Unit - SPU, International Telecommunication Union, ITU
* Ms Claudia Sarrocco, Policy Analyst, Telecommunication and Information Policy Section, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development - OECD, OECD
* Mr Jean-Jacques Sahel, Head of International Communications Policy, Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), United Kingdom
* Mr Ron Box, APT Standardization Officer, Asia-Pacific Telecommunity, Thailand
* Mr Shamsul Jafni Shafie, Head Security, Trust & Governance Dpt, Malaysian Communications & Multimedia Com; Chair SPG, APEC-TEL e-Security Task Group, Malaysia

There was some strong "insider" versus "outsider" attitudes prevalent, but there were sufficient others on the panel who truly wanted collaboration and have the right "open" spirit that could help bring others into this equation of true regional and international collaboration. Currently, the group consists mainly of government and intergovernmental organisation personnel and it is good to hear that many of them are reaching out to ISPs and other players as they understand this is needed to ensure effectiveness of their programs. I had previously interacted with many of the panelist during the SPAM workshop in Calgary, Canada organised under the auspicies of APECTEL. Communities such as NSP Sec should be included and MAAWG and APCAUSE are good places to start.

I ended the session with a quote from Barry Raveendran Greene, an active member of NSP Sec

“Never underestimate the power of human communications as a tool to solve security problems. Our history demonstrates that since the Morris Worm, peer communication has been the most effect security tool.”