Nearly 300 participants from academia and research, governments and NGOs, and commercial security investigation gathered in Barcelona from 26-29 May to attend the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) Symposium on Electronic Crime Research (eCrime 2015). This year's event was hosted by Caixa Bank at the exceptional and unique Caixa Forum in Barcelona, and had the highest number of attendees to date.
The event program included accepted research papers, case studies and research presentations, as well as expert panels that examined cryptocurrencies (e.g., BitCoin), mobile attacks, social media, messaging and data privacy abuse, domain reputation, (phishing) incident response, data privacy and security awareness. The breadth of the program illustrates the many cyber activities that shape or influence phishing and impersonation-based online crime.
During the event, ICANN was formally nominated and accepted as a Steering Committee member for both the APWG and the APWG EU. I'm excited to serve as ICANN's committee representative. I was also invited to speak on a panel to discuss the future of data privacy and security awareness programs including Stop. Think. Connect.
During his closing remarks, Caixa Bank Deputy Chairman, Antonio Massanell, welcomed ICANN to the APWG EU and expressed his appreciation that ICANN would lend its Internet governance and domain name industry expertise to APWG EU.
ICANN has enjoyed a mutually productive relationship with APWG since 2007. Security staff has participated in APWG's Internet Policy Committee and APWG members have been accepted to ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC). This cross-community relationship has helped raise awareness of the roles domain names and Internet addresses play in cybercrime, which has been helpful in shaping multi-stakeholder policies aimed at mitigating identifier system abuse. ICANN is excited to have a formal role in APWG and APWG EU and looks forward to even more effective collaboration in the future.