Message Level Assembles Advisory Board of Internet Security Visionaries

Thu Feb 9 20:04:08 PST 2006

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  Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2006 23:02:56 -0500
  To: Philodox Clips List <clips at philodox.com>
  From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah at shipwright.com>
  Subject: Message Level Assembles Advisory Board of Internet Security
  Visionaries

  <http://www.emediawire.com/printer.php?prid=344596>

  eMediaWire

  Message Level Assembles Advisory Board of Internet Security Visionaries -
  Choice They See: Sender-Based Email Validation or 'Game Theory Escalations'

  Message Level, Inc. announced today the formation of a technical advisory
  board, drafting three of the Internet's most recognized authorities in
  network risk management, secure network operations and network performance,
  a trio joined by their recognition that sender-based email authentication
  is an inevitable security design that maps fully to traditional business
  process protocols.

  Cambridge, MA (PRWEB) February 9, 2006 -- Message Level, Inc. announced
  today the formation of a technical advisory board, drafting three of the
  Internet's most recognized authorities in network risk management, secure
  network operations and network performance, a trio joined by their
  recognition that sender-based email authentication is an inevitable
  security design that maps fully to traditional business process protocols.

  Joining the company's technical advisory board are Mr. Bob Anita, Dr. Dan
  Geer and Mr. John Quarterman.

  Bob Antia is CTO of KSR, a managed security services provider; former VP of
  Information Technologies and Risk at Guardent; former Chief Security
  Officer's principal at Verisign; and board member of JP Morgan's Council of
  Communications Advisors and the FCC's National Infrastructure Reliability
  Council FG1B Committee on Cyber Security. Mr. Antia has also served as
  Chief Technical Architect for Exodus Communications and Director of
  Operations Technology for Cable and Wireless America.

  Dr. Daniel E. Geer, Jr., Sc.D., counts among his professional milestones:
  The X Window System and Kerberos (1988), the first information security
  consulting firm on Wall Street (1992), convenor of the first academic
  conference on mobile computing (1993), convenor of the first academic
  conference on electronic commerce (1995), the "Risk Management is Where the
  Money Is" speech that changed the focus of security (1998), the Presidency
  of USENIX Association (2000++), the first call for the eclipse of
  authentication by accountability (2002), principal author of and spokesman
  for "Cyberinsecurity: The Cost of Monopoly" (2003), and co-founder of
  SecurityMetrics.Org (2004).

  John Quarterman is CEO of InternetPerils, Inc., which provides
  quantification and visualization products to help financial institutions,
  banks, telecommunications providers, government, insurers, and enterprises
  manage their Internet business risks. His network engineering experience
  began in 1978 on the ARPANET project, the origin of the contemporary
  Internet, and he has been delineating internetwork performance since the
  early 1990s. His newest book, about Risk Management Solutions, has just
  appeared from Wiley. Twice elected to the board of USENIX, he helped
  orchestrate the funding of UUNET in 1991, one of the world's first two
  commercial ISPs. Frequent conference speaker, technical trainer, and
  writer, Mr. Quarterman retains an appointment as an Anti-Phishing Working
  Group (APWG) research fellow, building aids for visualizing phish server
  networks.

  Message Level CTO and founder Brian Cunningham said of the advisory board
  additions, "We are proud to provide the definitive email authentication
  solution at a time when this vital communications medium is so imperiled by
  criminal activity such as phishing and abusive messaging such as spam. We
  are prouder still to be joined in our enterprise by these senior statesmen
  of the information security arts."

  Messrs. Antia, Geer and Quarterman will be advising Message Level on
  product development and hardening, desktop integration, enterprise
  deployment, MTA integration and augmentation of Message Level technology
  for commercial-grade email. As well, the new advisors will be guiding the
  company in establishment of alliances and partnerships essential for the
  proliferation of message-level authentication as the preferred mechanism
  for substantiation of an email message's origin.

  Message Level CEO Mike McGowan said, "Email as we know it has reached a
  crossroads in which its credibility is at stake. Solutions proposed thus
  far have been ineffective, crushed by high cost and complexity and their
  vulnerability to attacks. Message Level, based on a protocol of irreducible
  elegance, is a technology whose moment has come. We are grateful that our
  new advisors, men whose provenances date to the very genesis of the
  Internet, have recognized the power and effectiveness of the Message Level
  solution."

  Message Level, with offices in Bethesda, Maryland and Cambridge,
  Massachusetts, has been developing its email authentication technologies
  since 2003 and holds an intellectual property estate dating back to 2003.
  Message Level technology creates query-able unique identifiers that are
  returned to the sender or his agents for confirmation before delivery,
  placing definitive authentication with the sender, a scheme that is both
  secure and places delivery liability in the sender's hands.

  Mr. Antia said of the company's authentication system, "The Message Level
  solution answers the simple question that all email users - enterprises and
  individuals - are forced to ask: did the sender of the email I am reading
  actually send this email? What's more, for enterprises that need to audit
  their communications, it conclusively satisfies the requirement of
  certifying delivery - and can do so without reliance on a third party.
  Message Level satisfies both these business processes without complexity
  for either the sender or receiver. I think the choice is simple. You can
  either deploy Message Level or enter into game theory escalations with the
  spammers, phishers and pharmers."

  Surveying the larger technology conflict that has arisen from the search
  for a definitive email authentication solution, Dr. Geer said, "Email is
  the killer app of the Internet in more ways than one. As much as it pains
  me to admit it, the current models have got to go but before we end up with
  something authoritarian or worse, let's try to do the right thing: Sender
  credentials that can be checked by those who want to check but which don't
  require massive infrastructures that no will ever build. Trust me on this,
  in e-mail authentication the best has been the enemy of the good for way
  too long."

  Speaking to ecommerce enablement engendered by the company's sender-based
  authentication scheme, Mr. Quarterman said, "Message Level's solution goes
  beyond recipient-acknowledgement schemes; it enables the receiver to ask
  the sender whether it sent a specific message. Miscreants who could evade a
  blacklist or pretend to be on a whitelist by using a different IP address
  or domain name have a much harder time with this scheme, since it depends
  on authentication deeper than network node identifiers. Message Level's
  authentication is strong enough to enable assigning liability to a specific
  party who sent or received or lost an invoice, and that could catalyze
  increased electronic commerce on the Internet, even beyond addressing the
  phishing problem."

  Message Level Media Contacts:
  Mike McGowan (703) 981-4718
  Brian Cunningham (617) 721-2459
  www.messagelevel.com

  # # #

  Contact Information

  Bill McInnis

  Message Level

  http://www.messagelevel.com

  804-355-5560

  --
  -----------------
  R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
  The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
  44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
  "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
  [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
  experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'