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Thu, 17 Jun 2004

Email Technology Conference - Day 1
posted by Chip Witt

A very exhausting, and eventful day. It began at close to 5AM, as I prepared to get to Larkspur for the morning ferry which would deliver me to San Francisco in time for the keynote speaker, and ended a little before 8PM after a long commute home. Before I begin to forget details, I will document the 'tweens below.

The keynote speaker today was Dr. Vint Cerf, Senior Vice President, Technology Strategy, MCI. Aside from being a very energetic, entertaining speaker, Dr. Cerf is celebrated as being one of the "Fathers of the Internet" for his contributions as the co-designer of the TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the Internet.

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Dr. Cerf covered many things, which although not terribly surprising to those following the industry, helped frame the current messaging environment properly to prime a stream of thought that seems to have been continued (at least so far) in the sessions which followed. The most critical of his comments was a reminder of the Turing Halting Problem, and his association of this with the problem of trying to assess the danger an email or attached file might pose to a computer. In his words, "no algorithm for assessing the danger of a file with guaranteed accuracy exists", which very clearly tells of the difficulties currently facing the email industry, organizations, and individual email users as they attempt to side-step viruses, spam, and various system attacks. Dr. Cerf also commented that the equivalent of a 5 minute conversation was around two days worth of email exchange, and people have the overwhelming tendency to choose the wrong medium for what should be quick exchanges. Sometimes the most efficient solution is to pick-up the phone. This is especially true when "flame wars" begin. The subtle negotiations that exist in face-to-face, or even phone communications are lacking in email, IM, and other written exchanges. Unfortunately, as he noted, people tend to read the worst of possible intensions into email, making its use best suited to those that already have an established personal rapport.

Dr. Cerf also outlined the types of messaging that exist:

• Deferred (asynchronous)
• Email
• Voicemail
• SMS
• Fax
• Paging
• Synchronous
• Instant Messaging
• Chat
• IRC
• Phone
• Radio

One of the challenges to innovation he identified will be finding out how these different types of systems could (and if they should) interact. It was suggested that one way companies might discover new opportunities for innovation would be to develop an interworking grid wherein one could visually match up the systems in an empty box to decide if there are any benefits to be found (e.g. the way IM sessions can be echoed via SMS to a smart mobile phone, or faxes can be sent to an email account). He also presented some interesting facts showing current Internet penetration statistics, demonstrating tremendous growth in the number of "connected" individuals throughout the world since 1997, highlighting the tremendous opportunities that continue to grow.

The funniest thing he said was during discussions about the beginnings of ARPANET and the military experiments with Radio Packet (RP) technology. He said that as they found Internet Protocol to be stable on unstable (undependable) infrastructure (like RP), he had a tee-shirt that said, "IP on everything".

In the next session, focused on the future of email, some interesting statistics were shared. META Group conducted a survey of corporate users, asking, if they had to choose between the two, would they choose email or phone as their means of communicating with others. 80% of the responses inicated a preference of email because it creates a written record of the discussion, can be sent to multiple recipients as easily as to an individual, and is asynchronous (not dependent on time or availability of the recipient). A study referred to by one of the other panel participants was said to reveal that 2/3 of the spam generated on the Internet was coming from "zombie" (virus infected, Internet-connected PCs commandeered by spammers) sources. The trends of spam filtering moving upstream (away from the client and server, and towards the gateway and routers on the Internet), the Sender Policy Framework, Microsoft's CallerID, and the merged SPF/CallerID spec called SenderID were discussed in brief (in a later break-out session, these, SMTPi, and Yahoo!'s DomainKeys were discussed in greater detail as means to "fix" the troubles with SMTP as it exists now).

In another session, storage issues were identified as the second most critical issues related to email...second only to spam. One of the panelists said he had the opportunity to plot email storage growth over a 10 year period. The results showed a growth rate of 25% - 50% per year, and averaged out to 35% per year over the 10 year period. The majority of this growth can be directly attributed to the use (and misuse) of attachments. Especially attachments sent to multiple recipients using the same server. Archive issues as they relate to Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPPA, SEC, and NASD regulations were also discussed. These archive issues permeate not only the email space, but are becoming increasingly important in areas like Instant Messaging, videoconferencing, and other messaging technologies as they grow as a means of sharing corporate knowledge. The importance of developing clear communications, retention, and records management policies focused on regulatory compliance and operational efficiencies was stressed. It was also noted that technologies in most common use are sorely deficient in addressing current compliance needs for most organizaitons, leading to rising frustrations, some C-level panic... and increasing fears over the technology challenges that imminent changes to take corrective action will create within the enterprise.

In a session discussing the untrustworthy nature of email, the concepts of prevention, protection, and proof were discussed as a means to safeguarding email messaging. Again, proof of identity using SenderID, digital signatures, and S/MIME were discussed. The idea of further validating messages based on the documented reputation of the sender was also diagramed. A parallel was drawn between the current need for verification to protect the integrity of email communication and the creation and use of the Credit Bureau. People knowing that their credit can be verified, and what it takes to be credit worthy actually increases the liklihood they will be able to become credit worthy. The same was said to be true for email. Once a process exists to verify the "email worthiness" of an organization or individual's messages, great strides will be made in cleaning out the world's inboxes.

Since I've already mentioned the SMTP solutions, I'll just share one last thing that was stated in the final break-out addressing the question, "Can SMTP be fixed"?. The moderator, John Levine, Author, and Chair, The Anti-Spam Research Group shared the humorous explanation of the "walled garden" concept of the early Internet (ARPANET), wherein people inside the garden could send messages to others in the garden, but no messages came into, or left the garden (no commercial use or misuse). If people were found to be in violation of the rules, their SysOps were contacted, and their actions were corrected. If the misuse persisted, "their bodies were thrown over the wall". This too was in keeping with Dr. Cerf's keynote, wherein he suggested a possible solution to the spam problem might be public flogging.

That's it for ETC Day One content. Also had the opportunity to connect with several good people for growing security and reselling opportunities for our WETCatz Hosting Solutions. Very exciting stuff. Looking forward to more of the same tomorrow.

Cheers for now,

CW

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