Online trust and the fundamental need to collaborate to address its challenges is an issue I care about deeply. Today I’m excited to share some important news about a new Initiative at the Internet Society that we believe will help us get to the next level in addressing online trust.
The Online Trust Alliance (OTA) is an organisation with objectives very dear to ISOC’s heart. OTA’s mission is to enhance online trust, and its goal is to help educate businesses, policy makers and stakeholders while developing and advancing best practices and tools to enhance the protection of users’ security, privacy and identity. OTA has a history of being principled, pragmatic and actionable.
Today we announced that the OTA is joining ISOC as a new Initiative. This is a key development for several reasons. Firstly, OTA has real experience delivering activities (such as their Online Trust Audit and Honor Roll) that drive deployment of trust-enhancing technologies at enterprises of all kinds. Secondly, their membership goes beyond the companies and organisations that build the Internet, to businesses that depend on the Internet for their daily operations in all walks of life. Its members and supporters include leaders spanning the public policy, technology, e-commerce, social networking, mobile, email, interactive marketing, financial, service provider, government agency and industry organization sectors.
Through this closer relationship with OTA, we hope to improve the Internet Society’s ability to react to developments relating to online trust, and our capacity to drive real, measurable change in organisations around the world using the Internet to engage with customers, partners and collaborators of all kinds. Similarly, we hope that the OTA membership will provide a new and eager audience for existing Internet Society initiatives and work streams, and a way to garner new inputs from a broader set of experiences leading to better, more meaningful, and more widely adopted outcomes.
For the foreseeable future, the OTA will continue to deliver its main work items such as the annual Online Trust Audit and the Cyber Incident and Breach Readiness Guide. The OTA will continue to be reachable through its website, and its members will be able to continue their work in the OTA committees.
This is an exciting day for the Internet Society, for the Online Trust Alliance and we believe will be an important milestone on the road to better deployment of trust technologies and stronger adherence to best practices for privacy, breach prevention, fraud prevention, and many other aspects of collaborative security on the global Internet.
Read more:
- Our page about the OTA
- Announcement blog post by OTA Executive Director Craig Spiezle