We’re very happy to announce that we’ve been named to the 2017 Online Trust Honor Roll from the Online Trust Alliance, a nonprofit industry group aimed at enhancing online trust, user empowerment, and innovation on the Internet.

This is the second year that the OTA has recognized Valimail’s website for adhering to the highest levels of consumer protection, data security, and privacy protection.

In addition, we’re pleased that the OTA continues to recognize email authentication support through DMARC as one of the essential security best practices that companies need to follow in order to win recognition from the OTA.

The audit surveyed 1,000 consumer-facing websites, and made use of data supplied by Valimail, in addition to other sources. Only 52% of the surveyed sites made it to the OTA’s Honor Roll.

Our press release on the recognition is below. We couldn’t be prouder!

Top photo: Brad K./Flickr

ONLINE TRUST ALLIANCE NAMES VALIMAIL TO THE 2017 ONLINE TRUST HONOR ROLL

Valimail honored for its commitment to website security and privacy

June 21, 2017 – San Francisco – Email authentication firm  Valimail today announced that valimaildev.wpengine.com has received Honor Roll status for the 2017 Online Trust Alliance (OTA) Audit & Honor Roll. The Audit & Honor Roll is the de facto standard for recognizing excellence in consumer protection, data security and responsible privacy practices for the world’s top companies.

“We are thrilled to once again receive Honor Roll status from the Online Trust Alliance for its 2017 (OTA) Audit & Honor Roll,” said Alexander García-Tobar, CEO of email authentication firm Valimail. “Nothing is more important to us than making sure enterprises are free of dangerous phish and shadow email services that can lead to costly, reputation-killing hacks and data breaches. This honor reflects the growing global commitment and interest in the important cause of email authentication.”

Valimail invented the world’s first automated email authentication platform, now authenticating billions of emails per month. Valimail gives enterprises, including some of the world’s leading brands, complete visibility, control, and compliance for all of the email being sent using their domain names, by their own systems or third-party cloud services. This enables organizations to stop impersonation attacks and mitigate shadow email sent in their names to anyone, including employees, customers and partners. This defeats phishing attacks and protects brands against abuse committed in their name.

As the only comprehensive, independent online trust benchmark study, the ninth annual OTA Online Trust Audit evaluates websites in three categories: consumer protection, responsible privacy practices and security. Based on a composite weighted analysis, sites that scored 80 percent or better overall, without failing in any one category, received Honor Roll status.  This year Audit scoring was modified placing increased weighting on the importance of end-to-end email authentication including the use of DMARC.

“The websites that made the Honor Roll should be proud of their accomplishments because it shows that they value the security and privacy of their customers just as much as profits,” said OTA Founder and President, Craig Spiezle. “Every year we make the Honor Roll criteria more stringent and this year was no exception. These companies should be commended for going beyond the status quo by adapting to the evolving threat landscape, and ensuring their privacy policy is transparent and their customers’ information is respected.”

OTA audited approximately 1,000 consumer-facing websites. It found that 52 percent of analyzed websites qualified for the Honor Roll. This year’s Audit included expanded data and telemetry from over a dozen sources including data provided by Valimail.  Companies in the Consumer 100 sector scored the highest out of any industry with 76 percent qualifying for the Honor Roll, while the FDIC 100 had the lowest at only 27 percent. More details about the 2017 OTA Online Trust Audit & Honor Roll is at https://otalliance.org/TrustAudit.

About OTA

OTA is an initiative within the Internet Society (ISOC), a 501c3 charitable non-profit with the mission to promote the open development, evolution, and use of the Internet for the benefit of all people throughout the world. OTA’s mission is to enhance online trust, user empowerment and innovation through convening multi-stakeholder initiatives, developing and promoting best practices, responsible privacy practices and data stewardship. To learn more about the OTA visit https://otalliance.org and Internet Society at https://www.internetsociety.org/.