If you visit the website at www.antiphishing.org, you'll find yourself confronted with a cornucopia of anti-phishing news, resources, and information. APWG stands for "Anti-Phishing Working Group," and it's basically a paid-membership-only industry consortium of Internet service providers, content companies, Internet security software and solution builders, and so forth and so on. In visiting their sponsors page, for example, we count 60 sponsoring members, 16 corporate members, and 33 research partners, including lots of major players involved in one way or another in providing access for, serving up content for, or securing today's Internet infrastructure.
For a different take on membership, here's the paragraph from the APWG's Membership page under the heading labeled "Membership Eligibility"
Membership is open to qualified financial institutions, online retailers, ISPs, the law enforcement community, security solutions providers and research institutions. Note that because phishing attacks and email fraud are sensitive subjects for many organizations that do business online, the APWG has a policy of maintaining the confidentiality of member organizations. [Note: individuals who work for member institutions may also join for an annual fee of $500.]
Membership fees for non-profits, academic institutions, government arms or agencies, law enforcement groups, and NGOs are not published, but yearly corporate memberships go for $5K , and yearly sponsoring memberships for $7.5 K. There are also premium ($15K/year, of which there are three: McAfee, MySpace.com, and Microsoft) and sustaining ($50K/year) memberships, but we don't see any sustaining member names posted on the membership pages. Do the math, however (60 x $7.5K + 16 x $5K + 3 x $50K = $680,000) and you get a sense of a small to middling professional organization that can offer information, education, and resources to the public on a modest but effective scale.
What you find on the AWPG website bears out this observation:
- eCrime Newswire: a busy newsfeed driven by the Exfacto! news retrieval service, that pumps out about 100-150 cybercrime and phishing related stories daily.
- Anti-Phishing Resource: A large collection of online information that ranges from whitepapers from AWPG members on relevant topics and technologies, to some interesting consumer advice, to a plethora of phishing education materials, trend reports, and links to anti-fraud organizations and corporate anti-fraud policies. There's some great stuff in here!
- APWG Events: A page that lists upcoming AWPG meetings and other events that garner support or mention from the AWPG.
There are a few other odd's'ends as well including a form to report phishing emails and sites, membership information, and a portal to a members-only Website. If phishing is a subject of interest, or you'll looking for technical or educational materials, this site is a great place to start.
Stu Sjouwerman
