Manos Antonakakis of Damballa Appointed Co-Chair of M3AAWG Academic Committee

ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Damballa Inc., the recognized experts in advanced threat protection, today announced that Manos Antonakakis Ph.D., senior director of research at Damballa Labs, was appointed co-chair of the Academic Committee of the Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group (M³AAWG).

“Dr. Antonakakis has worked with both industry leaders and with academia in his cutting-edge DNS security work. We look forward to his involvement in engaging the academic community and bringing the latest cybersecurity research to M3AAWG, where our members can use this information to better protect end-users”

M³AAWG is headquartered in San Francisco and through its members, represents more than one billion mailboxes worldwide. The organization is currently working on a variety of initiatives addressing ongoing and emerging messaging and mobile abuse issues, including bot mitigation, cooperative industry outreach, Web messaging abuse, DNS abuse, wireless messaging, and senders issues.

As co-chair of the Academic Committee, Dr. Antonakakis will work closely with the chairs of the M³AAWG Technical Committee and serve as a liaison between industry and academia. He will also be a conduit for valuable speakers from the academic community who are able to present new research and ideas to members so they can implement the latest techniques in combating online abuse.

“Dr. Antonakakis has worked with both industry leaders and with academia in his cutting-edge DNS security work. We look forward to his involvement in engaging the academic community and bringing the latest cybersecurity research to M³AAWG, where our members can use this information to better protect end-users,” said Jerry Upton, M³AAWG executive director.

At Damballa, Dr. Antonakakis directs advanced research projects and university collaborations. He is responsible for developing several patent-pending cyber threat detection techniques for Damballa. His inventions represent true innovation in early threat discovery and dynamic/predictive reputation systems, detecting cyber threats weeks before initial malware samples are discovered by the security community and long before the signatures or blacklists are incorporated into common blocking and alerting technologies. This research from Dr. Antonakakis has been accepted and presented at the prestigious USENIX Security Symposium three consecutive years.

“Cyber fraud and information theft stemming from malware activity within Internet and mobile service provider networks is of significant concern to the network operators as well as the subscribers they serve,” said Antonakakis. “I am excited to be able to contribute to M³AAWG initiatives and collaborate with the amazingly dedicated and talented members of this working group. The group’s efforts have had a significant and positive impact on reducing Internet abuse and crime, and I look forward to assisting in these efforts going forward.”

Click to Tweet: @DamballaInc Lead Researcher Manos Antonakakis co-chairs academic committee of #M3AAWG

About the Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group (M3AAWG)

The Messaging, Mobile and Malware 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 ) -- or M3 for Messaging, Malware and Mobile -- represents 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 an open forum driven by market needs and supported by major network operators and messaging providers.

About Damballa

Damballa offers the leading advanced threat protection solutions for identifying criminal actors in enterprise networks and malware-infected subscribers in carrier networks. Our patent-pending solutions automatically detect and terminate criminal activity, stopping data theft and providing the forensics needed to expedite incident response and remediation. Damballa protects any type of server or endpoint device including PCs, Macs, Unix, iOS, Android and embedded systems across corporate, ISP and telco networks. Damballa protects more than 300 million endpoints globally at mid-size and large enterprises in every major market, and for some of the largest ISP and telecommunications providers in the world.

http://www.damballa.com.